Recent reviews by nuhji

After playing Origins for a while, I eventually came to a point where because I saved over my usual save, I became locked into doing a boss fight without any way to go back and do some better prep or grind for a level or 2, and this situation alone is why I cannot ever recommend this game.

Overall the DLC just didn't feel that enjoyable, specially when a lot of it just felt like it was done just to pad for time (specially the early parts of the DLC)
The new dungeon is very dull, specially when it's the same visually for all except the major floors

Now that they've opened the SAO shop I can now comment on it. So it sells more than just cosmetics, which I consider bad, and something I only recently found out, you cannot use any of the SAO Shop related items if you happen to lose connection to the internet, the game will forcibly remove your visualizations and make you need to reapply them when you go back online, so you temporarily lose the ability to use things you may have paid for if your net drops, WHICH IS DUMB. I feel it's extremely dumb to have an always online DRM for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cosmetics.

So as of 1.09 the game seems to run better, although loading times seem to have been almost completely brought back to how long they were at launch. Game still has a specific monster type that causes crashes, which has existed since it launched, especially problematic considering you'll fight one during the game's story.


OLD:
So now that 1.03 is out, loading times have been massively improved, but it introduced some other issues, namely that the skill tree cannot be fully used with a controller, depending on my zoom in the skill tree it locks the menu cursor to a certain area within the skill tree, fully zoomed in I can only look at dual blades, fully zoomed out I cannot get low enough to access the Mace tree. This issue doesn't affect using a mouse with the skill tree. Also some issues still remain such as the fact that we still cannot do any manual adjustments or creation of arts codes.



Pre-1.03 issues (some may still exist)
So far the game has plenty of issues, one major one being optimization
I have this game installed on my SSD and area load times still take multiple minutes to finish
I have a decent enough rig that I shouldn't be seeing the frame drops I'm seeing in most areas
I've already run into a few crashes in the first area of the game, all happened around the same area

Optimization wise, it feels like this game might've needed a bit longer to be released

Edit: I tried moving the game from my normal SSD to my m.2, area load times still take about a minute long
And something I forgot to bring up as a problem I see, they brought back the accuracy and evasion stats for an action game... I thought we left those kinds of mechanics behind after Hollow Fragment since it was moved to being an Action-style gameplay

Edit2: I am now also finding that the game seems to be occassionally eating inputs, this happens with both controller and keyboard controls
Learned turning off Vsync drastically lowers area load times, but in response I've seen screen tearing on my TV

Edit3: As I play more, the game feels like it's eating more and more inputs, especially in combat, also I forgot to note that the mouse cursor for the game will randomly pop up in combat and stay on my screen (it pops up consistently with aimed skills, but I've had it show up when not using those skills)

Edit4: So seems like the reason my inputs were being eaten more was Fullscreen related? switched back to borderless and see very few inputs being eaten now

Like with the original release, I have encountered severe issues, mainly with my inputs being dropped constantly, and sometimes inputs happening more than they should
(ie. on a menu I hit down on d-pad once, but it goes down 2 options, camera turning for longer than I held the control stick in that direction)

This issue is making the game pretty much unplayable for me

Out of all the SAO games they've released thus far, this one is by far my favourite. I originally played this game when it launched on PS4, but never experienced the DLCs and Warriors of the Sky content until now. While I do love this game, I do find it has obvious issues, but I feel the overall issues in this game do not hurt it enough to not recommend it (unlike my Fatal Bullet review)

Out of all the SAO games I feel this one has the best AI for your partners, but I do also feel this is likely due to the ease of commanding them, and for comparison, Fatal Bullet's AI gave me no end to frustration and commanding them didn't feel like it helped much when it came to the most troublesome situations.

I do feel this game has a ton of lost potential when it comes to what they could've done to make this game work really well on PC. Long before SAO had come to PC, it came to mind that these games could have amazing potential on PC by implementing hotkey controls (ie. like typical MMOs) to make it easier to use buffs or skills instead of relying on the current sub pallette design they made with a controller in mind (which this game has some controller issues, whereas some of the other SAO games have great controller support including native DS4 support, a rarity in games I find).

Now one major design flaw I do see with this game is how they've handled some content. Starting from DLC1 they added in a system that has major aspects only available in single player (Enigma Orders, except for the end of some paths where you might use multiplayer to finish them due to needing to complete a specific episode x number of times), DLC2 added in another aspect of this that was also only available in single player (new Enigma Orders that required another single player only thing), and DLC3, which did add in a multiplayer-available aspect to some new enigma orders (only like 3 orders though), also added in a new place to get some of the best items, but it's only available in single player, this area is also likely the only content you'd really be doing at this point (alongside possibly still doing some enigma orders).

All in all I love this game, although I will likely forever wish they made a game that further expanded on smaller aspects from the books (untouched/barely touched unique skill(s), unused weapon types that did exist, etc)

Let me start off by saying I do really enjoy this game and SAO in general, but it just has a lot of glaring issues despite this and those are what I'll focus on here

- The AI for your allies is abysmal no matter what you do, up to and including the fact they will just sometimes stand in your way while you're sniping cause they won't run that far away from you (even had some that had snipers doing this to me), I've also had one standing right by me on the ground needing to be revived, only for another ally to be the one to run up and rez me (game seems to give priority of rezzing you to the ArFA-sys if they're alive, no matter how far they are)

- A few specific enemies feel massively overtuned to the extent that even on normal they can kill you in a few hits cause they're insanely accurate, each hit does lots of damage, they can shoot faster than you can react to the bullet line at times, and they have an insane fire rate to boot (on extreme difficulty I've even been 1 shot by them, and they just use a pistol), there are also times where they have thrown a ton of these enemies at you (and they will chase you pretty far I've found), these enemies often feeling like they require more setup and planning than most bosses in this game (especially on extreme difficulty, but even sometimes on normal)

- I'm glad I used an SSD cause there is a ton of loading screens at some points that didn't feel needed (the most glaring issue I saw was in the DotN expansion)

- Controls are a bit weird at times, early on I didn't have issues, but more recently I've somehow begun unequipping my weapon when I go to switch it (E key on the keyboard, holding it is supposed to unequip, but I've had it start doing it when I tap it to switch weapons, which is a pain because it always takes a second to notice it did this), another control issue I've found is trying to use weapon arts (V+middle mouse button), instead it'll bring out my UFG (middle mouse button) despite holding V before hitting middle mouse button

- The in game Enemy Players do not at all interact with monsters, which kinda hurts the the design of this being a faux MMORPG game, also makes it a huge pain when you accidently pull some while fighting them, to which I find my AI allies tend to focus on the monsters in these situations

- Hunting quests (to kill a named enemy player) are a pain to go through due to only being able to grab one at a time, they should've spread out the spawn points for them (they're limited to 1 because they do them in order and only give each area 1 point for them to spawn, except for 1 area, which gets 2 spawn points, but one is a high level area, so they can't use both spots early)

- Enemy AI acts very weirdly at times when you're able to find a safe spot to shoot/snipe from, from running around all over the place to just standing below you, which you cannot shoot them if they get below you usually, since the game has a minimum and maximum angle you can aim down or up, which also makes fighting a few specific flying enemies a pain as they will fly up high enough to require you to create more distance to get a good angle or just move right above you

- Most bosses felt fine, but there is a few I felt that had some things that were more annoying rather than difficult (mainly a few of the DLC ones)

- There is an "invisibility" gadget you can get in this game, but so very often I've found it just doesn't work as I've often been targeted and hit while using it (specifically the overtuned enemies I mentioned before are the biggest offenders for this too)

This game is an overwhelming example of Early Access done right
The game has changed and improved so much since I first started watching Northernlion play it before diving into it myself and they've made so many improvements and changes since that time and have now successfully come out of early access

I eagerly look forward to seeing what else these devs will give us now that they've taken it out of early access and mentioned that they still plan to give us more content

I was waiting for so long for this game, but it runs poorly on my rig (i5 6600k+SLI 1070s), and has caused no less than 2 Blue Screens, which my rig hasn't had a single one until now
I expect denuvo might be the reason for the poor running (can't even hold consistent 60 on low)
Leaving this negative review until the issue is fixed, may attempt refund since this is a fairly serious issue if it's causing my PC to Blue Screen
To add, they have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weekend support so if you try to report an issue too late on friday, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ til Monday, assuming they even bother trying to help

adding in, this issue came at such a bad time that even as a big MH fan, this issue may very well have turned me off from continuing to play anymore games in the series (especially cause of their lack of much needed support on the weekend)

complete ♥♥♥♥. no other words needed to describe this game