Do you enjoy holding forward to run through generic, uninspired environments while fighting the same few reskinned enemies time and again? How about opening chest after chest with useless consumables on your way to fight slightly different bosses that spam status effects?
If you answered “yes” to either of these for whatever reason, then Echoes of Aincrad is probably the game for you. Featuring hours of redundant padding and completely failing to make any notable use of the Sword Art Online license, I’m chalking this one up as another fine but underwhelming entry in the series.
You start Echoes of Aincrad as a player during the game’s beta before logging back in on launch day to get trapped in the game with no way to log out. An early cutscene sets this premise up well, but it’s too bad that the rest of the game usually doesn’t come close to matching its intensity, instead loading itself to the brim with overly long sequences filled with uninteresting characters and banal anime dialogue. It rarely feels like you’re in the Sword Art Online world, as the game presents itself like any random anime-styled fantasy game.
Not that this is a bad game, mind you. The visuals, controls, and general gameplay are perfectly competent. The world and characters look bright and appealing (though I was annoyed by much of the game’s geometry bizarrely has no collision detection).
The combat itself is surprisingly decent, too, with a good variety of weapons with their own skills to learn. You can dodge, parry, use heavy and strong attacks, and give loose instructions to your AI teammate.
It all works well enough, and some cool things are going on here, such as the ability to sever enemy body parts similar to the anime. This can make fights fun at times, but it’s not enough to combat the game’s overall sense of repetition, especially regarding exploration (or lack thereof).
Weirdly, despite seeming like an open-world experience, it feels oddly contained by wonky, railroaded level design that forces you to aimlessly wander to find a way forward. Yet, at the same time, you can only visit the game’s locations linearly, and if you step one foot out of the predetermined quest area, you’re warped right back in. This creates a frustrating trial-and-error design that limits your freedom, and it dramatically dampens any enjoyment that could otherwise come from exploration.
Verdict
Echoes of Aincrad isn’t a terrible game, offering passable combat and some neat ideas tied to the world of Sword Art Online. Unfortunately, it demands you spend too much time wandering bland environments with needlessly strict navigation rules. Considering its price, high levels of repetition, and often lifeless world, there are just too many better options demanding your time during a very busy 2026.
