Many have been looking forward to the most recent iteration of the lovely universe of the popular anime Sword Art Online which was released yesterday on July 9, or at least they were before it came out that the title would extensively use microtransactions and loot boxes in an era where they are increasingly scorned by everyone other than shareholders.
Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris has indeed launched on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Steam platform.
Unfortunately for PC owners, the optimization seems to have been skipped entirely for the PC version, resulting in staggering load times of well over a minute, fundamentally broken camera controls that whip around your character with enough speed to break their neck, frame rate stuttering, V-sync breaking load times and frame rate further, and an inability to reach the main menu until you progress far enough in the title (which means you can’t tweak settings until you play with the broken default).
Aside from that, top marks all-around.
Note that we’re skipping multiple complaints for the sake of brevity; note that it’s not a good look thus far for the new title that many were hoping would feature the anime in a bold, new manner that would highlight what made the initial arc so compelling.
PATCH. THIS. GAME. I don’t know what kinda team you have right now, but the BEST thing you can do is be open about the issues present, and let us know you’re gonna fix it.
— That one guy (@SAnticonsumer) July 10, 2020
SAOAL has now been live on Steam for 24-hours, which saw it receiving a barrage of negative reviews regarding optimizations; beyond that, however, and it’s clear that the title is still in need of yet another delay or two. At time of writing, it sits at 41% positive recommendations out of 922 reviews.
If you’re hoping for a better experience on either Xbox One or the PlayStation 4, however, you might equally be out of luck according to Twitter reports that are flooding towards Bandai Namco begging them to fix the frame-rate, or at least acknowledge that there are currently a plethora of issues plaguing the title.
This means yet another blow has been struck to the franchise as a whole, as Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris has stumbled mightily once it finally released, stacking on end with a bevy of iffy releases stemming from the seemingly cursed franchise.
Bandai Namco has not yet issued a statement on the current state of SAOAL, and fans are currently presuming that a patch will be incoming eventually; it would be difficult to tune out the deafening calls from frustrated consumers. It might be wise to file this under ‘reasons not to pre-order #1,001’.
As if you needed additional reasons. In-game microtransactions and loot boxes haven’t generated much of an outcry, as fans are currently struggling to get that far into the title.
