YMMV / Sword Art Online - Video Game

• Awesome Art: Carried over from the anime series, especially with the beautifully animated CG art used for dramatic cutscenes or the landscape for new areas like: the Hollow Area, Svartalfheim, Ainground, and the Flugel.
• Awesome Music: The games add several new entries which can be seen on this page.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Premiere. The fanbase is split over those who find her character and story arc interesting, while those who find her Emotionless Girl characterization to be uninteresting and she's overall a pretty dull character even though that was kind of the point.
  • The Player Character (nicknamed Protag-kun) for Fatal Bullet. On the one hand, fans were excited you finally get a customizable character of your own creation, rather than playing as Kirito like in past games. On the other hand, they are a bland Featureless Protagonist with unheard limited dialogue.
  • Bazalt Joe, he's either an interesting side character with a sympathetic backstory, or he's just plain annoying with how he never leaves you alone and keeps trying to take the Player's ArFA-sys.
• Broken Base:
  • Whether or not the game's story lines and handling of characters are an improvement over the canon series. Many have cited the games as being better for having deeper plots, more focus on the supporting cast, and improving divisive characters like Kirito and Yui by fleshing them out. Others criticize it for over doing the Harem Genre elements (especially the 'courting system'), having a buggy and tedious gameplay, and bogged down with unnecessarily long cutscenes.
  • The cutscenes themselves. For some they offer many entertaining and funny moments that the anime never did. For others it's a giant waste of time they'd much rather spend on fighting enemies. This is especially the case for the 'Introductory cutscenes' which tediously go through the very large cast for new players, but returning players become very sick of seeing.
  • The fact that characters who didn't survive in canon such as Yuuki and later Sachi get Spared by the Adaptation. While some think this is better as characters who were wasted get to live up to their fullest potential, while others are unhappy with this as it cheapens the stakes of the canon story and felt it ruined the story arcs with the removal of these grim consequences.
  • Fatal Bullet, with the fanbase pretty split over whether it's a good game. It received praise for its polished gameplay and choices of weapons. While others criticize it for being lacking in unique content and reusing the same handful of dungeon designs and enemy types all game long, with some bosses being complete reskins of earlier ones. The change of cutscenes to entirely CGI has also received mixed opinions, with some preferring the departure of the visual novel style scenes featuring the anime art, while for others its a case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! since nearly all of the dialogue sequences are just the character models standing around barely emoting compared to the anime artwork portraits with expressive designs. There's also the Fatal Bullet main campaign story line which nearly everyone criticized for being underwhelming and tedious, though this got relieved with the release of the DLCs which added a much more interesting plot and featured a far more wider selection of characters from all over the SAO franchise.
  • Alicization Lycoris became a bit of a hotbed of debate and one of the lowest reviewed games of the whole game continuity. Some defend it, thinking its design changes and overall shift to being more of a traditional open-world JRPG fits the story it adapts, while others think it lost a lot of what made the prior games interesting in their own right. And that's not even tipping into the debate of the adaptation itself; Alicization is the most popular arc of the franchise next to Aincrad, and the game opts to do a Pragmatic Adaptation of it that skims over a lot of the material and completely axes out the Underworld War arc, which ended up angering both fans of the storyline and the game universe fans that preferred all of the different stories being original and mostly independent of the main canon as an Alternate Timeline, even if it still applies here.
• Catharsis Factor: In Accel World vs Sword Art Online: Millennium Twilight you get to encounter Oberon based on the canon version, only this time Asuna isn't held captive or in any harm. So enjoy every second of getting to kill the biggest scumbag in the entire franchise.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome :
  • In Fatal Bullet, the fan community knows that the AI is flawed and is terrible at doing meaningful damage to enemies quickly. Because of that, it's common for the Player Character to be built as the main damage-dealing machine, and their ArFA-sys as a Support Party Member loaded with healing and buff skills such as Heal Field shot, Cure Field shot, Power Field shot, Armor Field shot, Critical Boost shot, Nanotech Boost shot and AED shot. And amongst the gadgets used, expect First Aid Kit and Anti-Aliment Kid, the former to self-heal and the latter to resist status effects, especially their upgraded versions.
  • Likewise, amongst the other party members aside from the aftermentioned ArFA-sys build, many consider Asuna to be the best AI teammate. Why? She packs essentially a similar build and is the closest thing to an ideal Support Party Member amongst the preset character loadouts, packing most of the skills mentioned above, and also has surprisingly good survivability. Her only weakness is her low DPS, which again is a non-factor considering the ally AI never bother aiming for weak spots. The fourth party member slot is more contestable, however, the most common picks for the fourth party member includes Silica (a tanky healer and the only other character aside from Asuna to learn AED shot later on), Lisbeth (covers all the buffs that Asuna doesn't and has various debuff and Status Effect skills, though squishy), Strea (a pure meatshield with Draw Aggro skills), Premiere (another healer, though with more all-around skill set), Kureha (packs a combination of tanking and debuff skills), Fukaziroh (one of the few offensive-leaning teammates recommended due to packing Graviton Shot, which prevents enemies from running and dodging attacks), Musketeer X (a buffer/debuffer that can inflict stun, similarly to Lisbeth), Seven (another buffer/healer, who also has Graviton Shot), and Sachi (another debuffer, packing Viral Shot and surprisingly durable).
• Complete Monster:
  • Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment: Nobuyuki Sugou is even worse than in canon. When attempting to hack SAO to acquire test subjects, Sugou is pulled into the death game himself. Finding himself with admin privileges, he creates an overpowered avatar for himself named Alberich. He attempts to join the Assault Team to pose as a hero, but gets rejected for being Unskilled, but Strong, at which point he continues with his twisted experiments on various players to change their emotional states. Due to his GM powers allowing him to bypass the Harassment Code, he is also believed to be behind a string of sexual assaults on female players. He then appears before the Assault Team, paralyzing them and unleashes the intended Final Boss of SAO to kill them all, so that he can pose as the only survivor and the hero who saved the day. When this doesn't work, he attempts to use a special sword to finish the job himself.
  • Hollow Fragment: "Hollow PoH" is a uniquely self-aware Hollow that shares the memories and personality of the infamous Serial Killer. Enjoying the constant violence of the Hollow Area and killing other Hollows, PoH stalks Kirito and Philia—SAO players who were trapped in the Hollow Area—and realizes that the Cardinal System considers him to be a potential Administrator. Knowing that Kirito would finish SAO after returning to the main game, PoH manipulates Philia by exploiting her fears. Then, PoH uses Philia to lure Kirito into a deadly trap after convincing her that it would merely incapacitate him. When Philia returns, PoH laughs at Kirito's apparent death and Philia's shock before beating her and revealing his goal to fuse the Hollow Area and Aincrad, creating a chaos that PoH would use to murder both Hollows and the Aincrad survivors at large scale, creating eternal carnage that he considers to be a paradise, uncaring—if not cheerful—that this would lead to the death of all Aincrad survivors.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Lost Song and Alicization Lycoris. Lost Song was a totally new engine but without much depth in its design, some real repetitive and simple combat, and was held as a fairly uninteresting game in the continuity overall with not much of a saving grace unless you just wanted more character interactions. Meanwhile, Lycoris had to follow up both Fatal Bullet and Hollow Realization — and, in most fan's eyes, didn't live up to either game at all. Most of the simulated MMO elements were absent, the battle system was held as questionable in its design, numerous mechanics of past games were completely wound back or removed to be more of a straightforward and rather generic JRPG, and it didn't even bother to adapt all that much of Alicization as an arc; the story seemed to be bumrushing through the plot players did know in favor of dozens of hours in-between, focusing on the original character Medina and the heroes taking a slow burn progression towards the next story beat, and ultimately culminating in everything after Quinella's death being subverted ahead of time by sheer happenstance, meaning half of the entire story arc, the entire Underworld war arc and the Ocean Turtle raid simply doesn't happen because Subtilizer appeared in Fatal Bullet.
  • Last Recollection, the Grand Finale to the gameverse, got rather mixed reviews due to the dated gameplay elements (without any attempt to present it as a Retraux) particularly the combat which felt like a 2000-2010 era MMO, rushed storyline (to the point that user reviews point out that it's basically a DLC for Alicization Lycoris), cut elements to streamline the storyline, and being pricey (with overpriced DLC adding side content and costumes). That being said, apart from omitting the ongoing Unital Ring, the story is considered to be a sweet finale for the gameverse.
• Continuity Lock-Out:
  • There's a fair bit of content featured that will make a lot more sense to light novel readers than it does to only those who watched the anime. For instance anime only fans probably wouldn't recognize characters like Argo, Kizmel, and Lux or the impact that their showing up leaves. Characters who appear early like Sinon, Yuuki, Alice, and Eugeo would also make it harder for anime only watchers to follow.
  • For Accel World vs Sword Art Online, a fair bit of knowledge on Accel World is required to understand what is going on with them. Though the characters do fill newcomers to the series in along the way.
  • A great number of newcomers to the gameverse continuity with Fatal Bullet were likely confused as to who Rain, Strea, Philia, and Premiere are, not to mention why the cast already know Sinon or why Yuuki was alive. A couple of characters try to loosely explain things, but altogether little to no context is given, and the Death Gun arc in Kirito Mode actually had to get minor rewrites to fit Kirito having already been playing GGO and knowing Sinon. Even worse, Alice and Eugeo were added in Hollow Realization with different connections and context than in canon altogether, and appear in the third DLC for Fatal Bullet in the middle of a battle with essentially no context besides being good friends with Kirito, only further confusing newcomers.
• Creepy Awesome: Persona Vabel, the video game's Knight of Cerebus who brought about a whole new level of Darker and Edgier to the games.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics and those indifferent with anime styled games often wrote out the games series as just another anime tie in. Fans, especially who don't mind with the Alternate Universe aspect, thoroughly love and enjoy the games series. Even those who hated SAO due to its flaws may love the games because of the Alternate Universe aspects.
• Demonic Spiders: Fatal Bullet has the Delinquents, Hooligans and Pyromaniacs. These obnoxious bastards that are like if you mixed a dragon and a Deathclaw, spread throughout the game as standard mobs, unique enemies, and even bosses. Not only are they easily one of the most nimble types of enemies in the game, being able to outrun sprinting players, but they also have the most attacks of any enemy type. From throwing fireballs, to propelling themselves across the room in a second, to lurching around for Collision Damage, they not only take an absurd amount of damage to kill but they hit like a truck. Later versions add the ability for them to combo the player to death with no chance to fight back. Worst of all, they have paralyzing roars that momentarily stun you and slow you down - and the later variants can roar after a full combo and then immediately attack right after, assuring your death.
• Dry Docking: Kirito had constantly been getting this reaction from fans who want the girls as their own waifus. Fatal Bullet having the main protagonist being a player-created avatar separate from Kirito completely was met with cries of joy from said fans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See this page.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Fatal Bullet has several of these, surprisingly enough:
    • Although you have to beat the game once (bad or true ending), the Rank 11 weapons in Fatal Bullet are easily this. By swapping the difficulty over to the unlocked Extreme Mode, which is intended for New Game Plus replay value by excessively boosting enemy levels across the board, you can find a new vendor that sells you these weapons (though to get versions with Memory Chips to customize, you need to tackle the November update's Level 175 co-op content). While you need the stats to be able to wield them, much less dual-wield, the sheer damage output they deal bends the game's balance over its knee as well as steamroll the DLC content, and the point that you can get them at means there's no reason to continue the grind for weapons for a damn long while if you grab them early. Although it's mitigated somewhat once you start reaching the highest level content and the DLC on Extreme difficulty, as they basically become essential to keep up in damage as the content scales up.
    • While some of these formerly strongest Rank 11 weapons such as LMG Moonlight 3++ and HMG Bravefire 4 eventually got Nerfed, the AR Ninja 3++ is considered the top DPS weapon since it has high critical damage and weak point damage, making bursting tough enemies faster when you attack their weak points for massive damage. Especially so if you dual-wield them for double the ammunition and rate of fire, though the STR and DEX requirements are very high. The catch? You have to defeat the somewhat difficult Makai Brothers, and even then it's a matter of luck to get a Legendary version of this weapon with the correct chips by defeating them over and over.
    • The AMR Grim Reaper+ is the other top weapon of choice used to quickly kill bosses. Like the AR Ninja 3++ above, it has high weak spot damage in addition to better critical rate and damage compared to AMR Tiamat Mk3++ and AMR Breakthrough 4 while having damage per shot comparable to these anti-material rifles. It's only weakness is that the bullet travels slower, meaning it'll not hit fast-moving targets consistently. It's often used with Explosive Shot to quickly defeat the Behemoth MT-13 by hitting it on it's true weak point on the lower part, normally unhittable with anything but Launchers. It's a little easier to obtain compared to the AR Ninja 3 above, being dropped by the new sniper enemies introduced in the third DLC, guarding the five keys required to unlock the Lost Gate.
    • Still not satisfied by the early Rank 11 weapons there? The 4th DLC also introduces the Purposefully Overpowered Type-Z weapons (there's one for each weapon category), as well as Gigas Cedar G4, Blue Rose F9, Royal Guard Gold and GL9 Disaster Gold (though you need the Abyssal Dungeon and co-op content for these weapons). All of these weapons have even more increased attributes than their original counterparts. Additionally, the Type-Z weapons are also available at bounty reward aside from really hard co-op content, and although you still have to grind the bounty a lot (starting from around 122.5 million), they also are packed with memory chip values that are beyond what normally can be achieved by transforming them from the workshop, even at the maximum level of 12. Special mention has to go to the Long Stroke Type-Z obtained at 160 million bounty, with two of it's chips including Physical Attack +50%, and the damage goes beyond that with the Quick Shot skill.
    • "Human Fortress" is a simple "Tank" skill that buffs the player character with ability to No-Sell attacks that would normally make them flinch. Why is it considered a Game Breaking ability? Simply put: Human Fortress makes you absolutely invulnerable to receiving any knockback or stunned infliction from just about ANY ENEMIES. The paralyzing roar from the Demonic Spiders Delinquent-type mobs, field bosses, and dungeon bosses, followed by heavy strikes that sends you and your allies flying back? No longer an issue apart from receiving damage. The Flashbang from enemy AI Players that will leave you open to attacks for some time while your screen whites out? Only blinds you while you can still freely retaliate or move to the nearest cover. Stationary Turrets that will always cause a knockback whenever they get a hit on you? Nothing more than a trivial enemy waiting to be put down. ^note  Although Human Fortress 2 and higher also increase defense, their defense buffs are lower than the Armor Form skill of the same tier (Human Fortress 2 is equivalent to Armor Form 1, Human Fortress 3 equivalent to Armor Form 2, and Human Fortress 4 equivalent to Armor Form 3), and is pointless to use so with party members with Armor Field Shot, which is why it's recommended to just get Human Fortress 1 only.]]
    • The Handgun Bullet Arts ability greatly reduces the cooldown timer of the player's skills, paving way for them to spam the Blaze and Poison Field ability to wither down a field/dungeon boss' health faster with higher chances from the continuous repeated use, utilize Hyper Awareness more often without being limited by the long 180s cooldown timer, repeatedly use Azure Tempest to make the huge mobs flinch repeatedly to stop them from trying anything etc. The list of possibilities with the freedom of spamming your skills in short intervals goes on.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Fatal Bullet:
    • Any flying mech-type enemies could qualify. Unlike the Bee enemies, the mechs WILL fly offscreen or above you,pretty much forcing you to have to scramble around map, trying to regain visuals on them as they speed up and around you while pelting you with Suppression and either rockets or Gatling gun bullets.
    • Turrets, on their own, aren't that much of a threat as long as you are within an arm's reach near them. However, put 2-3 of them in a small room flooded by automaton mooks (like in one of the White Frontier's dungeons for example),and you're guaranteed to have a wonderful hands-on experience of getting knocked back while being shot at simultaneously by the other mooks'.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: One of Kureha's biggest fears in Fatal Bullet is being forgotten due to the accomplishments of her older sister overshadowing her own; it's the reason why she plays GGO, even. Come the anime's third season and adaptation of the Alicization arc, one of the standout scenes that the series fans freaked out over was Kureha and Zeliska getting The Cameo, complete with Kureha canonically breaking into the top ten best players in GGO. Seems no one's forgotten her and she's done quite fine for herself.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The "Murder in the Safezone" story where characters speculated the possibility of the ghosts of dead players coming back, becomes a lot more ironic with the Hollow Area featuring Hollow Data copies of players including dead ones. Ghosts really did return in Hollow Fragment.
  • The Berserk fandom has been known to treat Kirito as the pretender "Black Swordsman" to Guts. The Big Bad in Hollow Realization, Genesis, physically resembles Guts more than Kirito does, but is treated In-Universe as the pretender to Kirito.
  • One of the in-game character banters in Fatal Bullet has your ArFAsys / Rei telling Klein off from dashing headfirst into battle, to which he responded that "A samurai yearns for the first kill," and an A.I like her/him wouldn't understand. Rei then scolds him, stating that he's the one who doesn't understand and that there are no samurais in GGO. Come the second DLC, where the boss of the new dungeon is a Dual Boss against a pair of samurai robots called the Makai Brothers, one of whom even bumrushes you with a photon sword.
  • In Accel World vs. Sword Art Online: Millenium Twilight the SAO gang encounter a future version of Yui (their adopted digital daughter) named Persona Vabel, who fell into despair after both of her "parents" died, leaving her abandoned and leading her to Time Travel and erase herself from existence. Thanks to crossing over with Accel World, one of the characters they encounter is Kuroyukihime (a.k.a. Black Lotus), who is often theorized to be Kirito and Asuna's biological daughter. So, it could be said that Kirito and Asuna teamed up with their own daughter to save their adopted daugther.
• Ho Yay:
  • Oodles between Kirito and Klein. Many fans even include Klein as part of Kirito's Supporting Harem.
    • In Hollow Fragment, Kirito can date and bridal carry Klein, along with any male player.
    • Also in Hollow Fragment, Kirito encountered an event that scored a couple's compatibility. After failed attempts from all of the harem with Kirito, Klein get scored as a perfect couple with him.
    • In Fatal Bullet, when Klein first sees Kiriko (Kirito's canon girly GGO avatar) he immediately wonders if Kirito's face always looked this cute.
  • In Hollow Realization, Klein and Agil get caught at a cafe sharing a couple's drink (two straws in one glass). They start becoming all flustered and defensive when Kirito and Philia sees them together, and insist they had no idea the drink would turn out this way. Kirito is willing to dismiss it as being the default way on how they serve said drink, but Philia won't drop it and congratulates Agil and Klein at being a couple.
  • In Hollow Realization, along with being able to court Klein, you can also do it with Eugeo and even get pillow scenes with him!
  • Fatal Bullet once again has Eugeo sharing a pillow talk with Kirito, and this time it really makes Kirito uncomfortable while Eugeo remains oblivious as to why.
  • The player character's relationship with Itsuki in Fatal Bullet has shades of this, even if you play as a female avatar due to the writing seemingly still considering them male. Itsuki is incredibly fixated on the player, calling them his most important person and goes full yandere on them when he realises that he is not their Number 1.
  • Alicization Lycoris ramps it up to eleven. With the game dating system make a not-so-subtle attempt on hiding that the fact you basically court other characters by directly make an advance to them (ie. Hand holding, hugging, implied kissing), Kirito basically able to make a full advance toward Eugeo. Adding up by the fact, their pillow talk are far more sensual than the previous games and some of their quote sounds more like a pair of couples instead.
    • Lycoris also comes with Bond Episodes like the other games only this time there are more male characters instead of just Eugeo, with Kirito being able to end up naked in a bath with Bercouli or a shirtless Eldrie acting like a tsundere towards him. And that's not even mentioning Eugeo's episodes' themes about coming to terms with your conservative and unaccepting family with the help of a partner.
• Hype Backlash: Fatal Bullet is commonly cited as one of the best Sword Art Online game, but even then professional critics gave it a So Okay, It's Average score at best. There are also plenty who were excited pre-release, but found the experience underwhelming due to its lackluster story and the fact that for a Sword Art Online game the swordplay was very lackluster.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • There are those who consider the video games' continuity (Hollow Fragment, Lost Song, and Hollow Realization) better than the original storyline of the novels/anime due to several factors, such as having to fight all the way to Floor 100 of Aincrad, giving supporting characters like Sinon, Silica, and Lisbeth (and especially Argo) more screentime, and removing some of the most controversial aspects of the original story. You can also explore the world of Aincrad in much more detail when the anime had glossed over many locations and settings, along with many newer areas exclusive to the games such as the Hollow Area.
    • Specifically, Suguha's pseudo-incestuous crush on Kirito is nowhere to be found in Lost Song as the game already established she knows Kirito is her cousin in ALO in the first cutscene. The heavily disliked Fairy Dance arc is also completely averted due to Sugou getting defeated in Aincrad before he can try anything in ALO.
    • The villains exclusive to the games in general are also considered far more interesting and complex, with many of them playing bigger more active roles, such as Hollow PoH, Seven, Genesis, Tia, Persona Vabel, and Itsuki. Plus several of them are more fleshed out and sympathetic (especially Seven and Vabel), as opposed to most of the canon antagonists who are quite one-dimensional and straight-up evil.
    • Also, fans of Yuuki Konno were pleased to find that she WASN'T Doomed by Canon!
    • And for an in-universe example in Hollow Realization, the SAO Survivors can now play a remake of the game that brought them together without the threat of the death game. An out-universe continuation to this is that in the game... Yuuki can learn Dual Wielding!
  • A case can be made for the mobile game Memory Defrag as well. It's unique position where it treats both the main series and the video game continuity as equally canon offers up many interesting stories and interactions between characters. The side stories exclusive to the mobile game heavily explore the supporting characters (Lisbeth, Silica, Sinon, Klein, Yuuki, Rain), and quite often Kirito is completely absent. This goes for the gameplay as well which offers a wide selection of characters from the main series, the video game continuity, the movie, and Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. It also shows what the characters are up to in Slice of Life snippets inbetween the major events of the series. There's also the fact the mobile game stories likes to have characters lampshade and make fun of Kirito's overpoweredness, rather than gush at how awesome he is.
  • Integral Factor allows journeying through the Aincrad arc, not as Kirito, but as yourself. This gives you the chance to talk and interact with a lot of the side characters that Kirito only briefly interacted with. Kirito is still there, but he's switched from being The Hero to something more akin to a supporting Big Good and has his own adventures offscreen, which many feel works better for both him as a character and the story as a whole. Each floor is explored without any Time Skips, with many stories being adapted from Progressive which didn't make it into the anime.
  • Last Recollection uses a version of the War For Underworld arc to make up for Alicization Lycoris cutting the cast and narrative back, supposedly to use the light novel and anime continuity, only to abuse a single plot point from Fatal Bullet, by bringing back everyone, including Yuuki Konno, who gets her own videogame-exclusive Goddess/Superuser account, Gladia, and several characters unique to the video game continuity, allowing almost every playable character in the series to return.
  • Interestingly, for the whole game continuity, many fans actually prefer Kirito himself in the games compared to the anime adaptation. Part of it stems from the fact that by having more hands-on time with him in the lead role for longer storylines, he gets a lot more personal thoughts out and the player gets better exposure for his characterization compared to his attempts to be the Ineffectual Loner and an infamously Invincible Hero in the anime. There's also the fact that thanks to an extra year in Aincrad and more opportunity for Character Development with each new title, Kirito gets to both bare his flaws and improve a lot more as well.
• Les Yay:
  • In Hollow Fragment, during the pizza roulette event, Strea wins the dare and instructs Kirito to kiss her. Asuna who was the other winner, is having none of it and instead instructs Strea to kiss her. Strea is all too eager and passionately makes out with Asuna in front of everyone. When she’s finally done, an ashamed Asuna asks Kirito if he still wants her as his wife.
  • As well as her canonical rivalry with Kirito for Asuna, Yuuki Konno tries to date most of Kirito's harem at least once.
  • The mobile game Rising Steel, adds Eydis Synthesis Ten, who adores Alice to the point where it may very well be a crush. She yearns for every moment she can be with Alice, is a Cuddle Bug only for her, and constantly tries to get Alice to baths with her.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Sword wielders in Fatal Bullet, including Kirito, Leafa, and Philia. Why? The AI for sword-wielding teammates will rush into enemies to attack, which leaves them open for attack and resulting them in dying quickly, which can be attributed to party wipe-outs. That being said, Yuuki, Alice and Eugeo at least don't have it that bad, since both Yuuki and Eugeo has Nanotech boost shot and are good buffers, while Alice compensates with debuff skills, as well as Electrodynamic Stunner to stun enemies, leaving them open for weak point attacks for massive damage. Additionally, both Alice and Eugeo has an exclusive skill on their sword weapons which are unique to them (and the player character, if they can complete the brutally difficult sub quests for their respective skills).
  • In addition to the above, Zeliska, despite her moniker as "The Uncrowned Queen", and while she does have healing and buffing skills, she simply can't ensure the party survivability as much as Asuna, Silica or Premiere, for one reason: Zeliska has low VIT, and therefore max HP and will go down easily to enemy attacks, and she doesn't provide the best utility (as she only has Healing Bullet and Power Form shot). The rest of her skills simply doesn't contribute much to the team utility, unfortunately.
  • Also in Fatal Bullet, Pitohui, strangely enough, tends to be criticized for having actually poor survivability despite her relatively high VIT and AGI. This is due to her having neither First Aid Kit nor Anti-Aliment Kit, and instead prioritizes damage-based gadgets and Metamaterial Camouflage. This renders her vulnerable to status effects, and her efficiency as a tank isn't reliable. While this was meant to reflect her Combat Sadomasochist nature, it doesn't help that her contradictory skillset and gadgets ends up not contributing much to the party, as she can end up leaving more vulnerable teammates to death.
• Magnificent Bitch: Millenium Twilight: Persona Vabel, the Twilight Witch, is a future version of Yui, Kirito and Asuna's AI daughter, who decides to erase herself after countless years of loneliness. Using her powers to travel to the past alongside Chrome Disaster, Vabel creates data copies of the Kings of Pure Color that she controls and leaks Brain Burst data to the MMORPG Alfheim Online (ALO), throwing ALO into chaos to activate its manual consoles. Inside ALO, Vabel manipulates Kuroyukuhime into fighting Kirito and kidnaps Yui to seal her. When Nega Nebulus and Kirito's friends join forces, Vabel unleashes a loyal Chrome Disaster to deal with them, showing friendship with the bloodthirsty beast. When the protagonists manage to reach her in the future thanks to help from the Cardinal System, Yui uses the Armor of Catastrophe to fight them and, after her defeat, she apologizes to Kirito for her actions.
• Memetic Troll:
  • Strea. Stalks Kirito, constantly hits on him, spontaneously hugs him, loves putting him through Marshmallow Hell, and to top it off she thinks of him as her daddy.
  • Yui has gotten this in the games, where people have said she exploits her childish innocence to put her older friends into embarrassing situations. Outstanding instances include: taking a game of "Playing House" too far and has Sinon being a baby and Philia being the pet dog, groping all of the girls boobs For Science! and trying to get Kirito to decide whose were the best, and continuously calling everyone into a room when the girls (Yui, Asuna, and Lisbeth) had just gotten out of the bath which ends up making Kirito look like a pervert.
  • Argo got made into one in Memory Defrag due to her appearing in a cutscene for the Character Scouts, leading fans keep calling her responsible for the extremely low summon rates and it actually being an act of her trolling the players.
• Moe:
  • Seven. At the age of twelve, she's the youngest member of Kirito's circle of friends to date, with her sister Rain and Kirito constantly looking out for her.
  • Rain, who tries to be a responsible big sister to Seven, but is much The Cutie herself and a bit of a Cute Clumsy Girl.
  • Premiere from the game continuity. Kirito is especially protective of her and sees her as vulnerable due to her naive nature.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: And how! However, see Critical Dissonance above.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Yuuki in Hollow Fragment, having one surprise appearance as a Post-Final Boss, but one of the most memorable moments in the game.
  • Eugeo and Alice get brief DLC appearances in Accel World vs Sword Art Online, but are nonetheless very memorable.
  • Tin Writer and Graphite Edge showing up in Accel World vs Sword Art Online, two Unexpected Characters whose very existences carry huge implications. Their brief scenes caused the fanbase to go wild.
  • Team LPFM from Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online: LLENN, Fukaziroh, Pitohui, and M, who appear in short scenes in Fatal Bullet, but all of them extremely memorable.
  • Fatal Bullet DLC characters like: Dyne, Yamikaze, and Musketeer-X[[note]]in her first voiced appearance, along with SAO AGGO characters Clarence and Shirley.
• Paranoia Fuel: In Fatal Bullet, Itsuki brought back the death game premise by having several of the Player's friends at risk of wearing a NerveGear. Said character will perform a Heroic Sacrifice and die if the conditions for attaining the True Ending are not met.
• Porting Disaster: It's not hard to find Alicization Lycoris hard to play on anything lower than a high-end gaming PC, which is still unstable at its best moments even after several patches. The performance was far from good on consoles, but the PC port borders on unusable, and the game will completely chug itself if you even so much as look in the direction of a populated town, even from the other side of the area map.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Kirito. Common criticism for him in the anime is that his personality was very generic and boring, however the games greatly flesh him out. He shares a lot of his inner thoughts and perspective on life, making him seem far less one-dimensional, while also having a great deal more adorkable moments when he gets thrown into awkward situations.
  • Leafa/Suguha's biggest criticism in the main series is her Brother–Sister Incest / Kissing Cousins plot which seems to dominate the majority of her character. In the gameverse she knows straight from the beginning that Kirito is her brother, and while there are hints of an attraction again she gets many more moments with the rest of the cast to flesh her out.
  • Yui. While she's often considered an annoying moeblob in the anime who's only there to be cute, the games greatly flesh out her character. She tries to learn about the real world and humans, while having a habit of putting her parents into embarrassing situations due to her naivety and/or trolling. Also in Accel World Vs. Sword Art Online, anyone who had gotten sick of Yui changed their mind after seeing her as Persona Vabel, where's she's become a Future Badass and a Tragic Villain.
  • Sugou, of all characters, managed to have this done for him in the games. Where he's no longer an Orcus on His Throne who spends the entire arc sexually assaulting Asuna or screaming his alleged godhood every minute. Instead he's an active threat throughout the story, and no longer an Invincible Villain that could only be beaten via Ass Pulls. While he's still a bastard, his hamminess and smugness have been toned down. At least until he reappears in Accel World VS Sword Art Online, where the canon Oberon version of Sugou shows up and he's pretty much back to being the lecherous creep obsessed with Asuna, but hey at least he doesn't have Asuna captive this time.
• Rewatch Bonus: In Memory Defrag, the Helheim Invasion arc features Skull and Grimm as two demon NPCs that accompany Makoto. It's later revealed that they are actually the Skull Reaper and the Gleam Eyes, the bosses from SAO. Their previous dialogue makes a lot more sense after this revelation, especially with Skull claiming she was completely skeletal back when she was alive.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Fatal Bullet opted to have a number of boss attacks be nigh unavoidable. Not too big a deal in a normal playthrough, but once you start getting into some of the nastier bosses scaled up on Extreme, or worse yet fighting their tier 2 co-op variants that are stronger than anything in the main game, it doesn't matter how much VIT or AGI you have - you're probably going to die regardless of level unless you get an accessory to counter instant-death, because their damage output can potentially exceed the player HP cap and defenses. Even if you bring an ability like Shield Matrix to No-Sell such attacks altogether, the bosses might spontaneously decide to spam said attacks with no real indication that they'll do so - and spam it so hard that it's an assured Total Party Kill.
  • A common problem throughout the games is the fact that your AI teammates are complete and utter morons that force the player to take the lead in every battle. Fatal Bullet made it the most blatant, what with the AI being implausibly slow on the uptake when it comes to both combat and support and potentially even waving at your corpse in the middle of a gunfight instead of reviving you, but it's been there as far back as Hollow Fragment. It's especially bad when you deal with the aforementioned bosses above, as your AI partners will flagrantly get themselves killed and leave you screwed over. The AI simply can't keep up with FB's fast-paced gameplay compared to practically being strapped to your waist for earlier titles.
    • Can be similarly bad for Integral Factor. While Koharu is usually good on the draw and generally helpful, the times in the story you get partnered up with two or three more party members can be an exercise in frustration. They will blindly rush into foes that you aren't attacking, damage them, and then the foes decide to Gang Up on the Human. However, as what may be a trade off for their reckless behavior, you never need to worry about their HP, only your own.
  • Enemy mobs, especially in the "Old South" city ruins region, are often placed in inconvenient locations with seemingly no regard to leveling, and their roaming limit seems to be unfairly generous; It is not uncommon to be fighting an enemy that is comfortably within your level threshold only for an enemy that is 20-30 levels higher than you to decide to wander over and make your day a living hell, often chasing you across the map and unleashing attacks that can take out your whole party in one or two strikes.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • In Lost Song, the Knuckles have the worst damage output despite having one of the fastest attacking animations and less end-lag from their sword skills. Additionally, Daggers aren't that good in damage output early on (though not as bad as the Knuckle, given that they catch up with most other weapons with high-level skills near the end of the game), these only catch up late in the game that requires boosts to elemental damage, and the characters associated with it (such as Silica) have versatility in their skills.
  • In Fatal Bullet:
    • Grenade and Rocket Launchers. These weapons not only fire slowly, but have rather awful DPS compared to other weapons, and given that while not impossible, it's significantly harder to hit weak points with them as the weak point hitting with launchers are not the same as other weapons (aside from Swords, which can't hit weak points at all). While Photon Swords at least have some notable skills such as Vorpal Strike and especially Sword Barrier, launchers have only one notable skill that saved them from being completely useless: Graviton Shot. And even then, Graviton Shot can also be used with Gatling Guns, which has pretty good DPS (though Gatling Guns are problematic with the overheat build-up, that problem can be mitigated with the correct weapon chips). Despite this, the Launchers only count as this to the Player Character, as the AI-controlled teammates, while not good at aiming, aren't issued with the same issue as they can ignore hitting resistant points with Launchers, not to mention that one character who uses this weapon type (Fukaziroh) also has Graviton Shot in her skill loadout, and said weapons are actually effective against the giant mechs such as Mech Agressors (this includes Named Enemies that have similar model to them) that have convenient weakness to explosive attacks on their feet, which can down them and leave them vulnerable for the player to shoot their weak point in the back.
    • Despite the after-mentioned unique skills for Swords, it doesn't help that they are close-ranged weapons that cannot hit weak points and have to rely on critical hit. This is also part of why sword-wielding party members are also seen as some of the worst party members, considering how the AI controlling them works. Additionally, Gun & Sword also exists as a separate weapon type, being better in every way than just using a singular Photon Sword (though they need double the Sword's STR and DEX requirements), and also has one additional skill in Dual Orbital that has a good long reach and damage output.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Persona Vabel being revealed to be a version of Yui from a Bad Future.
  • Subtilizer showing up in Fatal Bullet DLC storyline as the mastermind behind Lievere.
  • The trailer for Alicization Lycoris DLC storyline Myosotis drop a giant one featuring Eugeo (who is implied to had already cross Despair Event Horizon) wearing a black version of his armor when he was synthesized and having a pair of glowing red eyes, heavily implying that he (or his alternative selves) will become the main villain for the upcoming storyline.
  • Floor 75 of Integral Factor. The canon duel between Kirito and Heathcliff occurs and the result is the same. However, before the game can begin to log out everyone, someone or something hijacks it, stops the deaths of Kirito, Asuna, and Heathcliff, jails Heathcliff instead of letting him die, and the players remain to get to the 100th floor. Additionally, the protagonist and Koharu decide to get married like Kirito and Asuna.
• Special Effects Failure: Fatal Bullet almost entirely fills itself with cutscenes with the on-field graphics, rather than the more expressive models for a small handful of scenes. This leads to some very weird character animations, such as female characters lifting up their left hand to rest just above their chest (sometimes with two characters doing it simultaneously!) and recycling the same generic emote animations all game long while barely having any expression changes.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Infinity Moment / Hollow Fragment served to kickstart the gameverse, but were fairly repetitive and straightforward dungeon crawling games where attacks were automatic and the player builds up SP to spam Sword Skills, resulting in fairly bland gameplay. Then came Hollow Realization, which not only expanded the scale of the environments, quests and design of the game world, but radically overhauled the gameplay as a blend of hack-and-slash and "avoid the enemy skill" designs of modern MMOs, alongside larger parties and more complex team orders for more dynamic battles. With the budget increase and the great deal of improvements overall thanks to being made for consoles rather than handhelds, Hollow Realization plus all of its Downloadable Content (which is packaged with the game by default in the now-standard Deluxe Edition) is often regarded to be the best traditional game in the franchise so far.
• That One Boss: Fatal Bullet has a plenty of bosses that will wipe you and your party so often for various reasons:
  • Amongst the main story bosses, the Manhunter can be really difficult to take down, especially since it is a stronger version of the aftermentioned Demonic Spiders. As you can probably expect, it's also very difficult to kill and can do a lot of damage, and moves so fast that it's difficult to dodge it's bull-rushing attacks. What makes it on a different level is that it's roar, in addition to flinching you and your party members and inflict suppression, summons two Delinquents afterwards, and uses it twice at two different HP thresholds. A Named Enemy with similar moveset named "Abyss Guide" also appears to the left of the SBC Flugel gate before then, but at least it's optional, and there is a trick to cheese it by shooting it from the other side of the cliff due to it's AI trying to charge straight at the player, or at least forcing it to use it's fireball attacks. The Manhunter, on the other hand, is unavoidable, and can prevent players from finishing the game (unless playing on Easy difficulty, which greatly decreases damage dealt from enemies). Though, Abyss Guide also appears in "Eugeo's Request" at a much higher level and in specific part of the field, where the cheese strategy doesn't work anymore...
  • The Honeycomb Maker is a Field Boss in Solitary Sands that can be encounter behind the Industrial Zone. Despite only having two attacks (A straight beam shot and a 5-Stream beam attack), they hit HARD. Combined with the flying Mech-type enemies' Fake Difficulty advantage of constantly flying overhead where the player can't move their cursor to follow easily, Honeycomb Maker does a team wipe just as easily as cleaning a few stains off the table. Given its level (as well as the extermination-mission) being indicated to be Lv76, it's not uncommon for unprepared players to end up getting their asses handed to them by the Honeycomb Maker while leaving them to question if they've accidentally took a lv100 mission without realizing it.
  • The Makai Brothers in the second Fatal Bullet DLC. Until you get significantly higher level than them, they both take a ridiculous amount of damage unless you can shoot their small masks, and simultaneously dish out ridiculous amounts of it themselves. The golden brother with a sword can combo your party members into oblivion and has area-of-effect attacks he can abuse with impunity, while the silver brother is more passive but packs a rapid-fire pistol that can kill you in seconds regardless of level on top of the various traps he lays around. And even worse, once you defeat one, the other Turns Red, buffs their damage output, and becomes even more aggressive! It's all too easy to see co-op teams get slaughtered by the berserk golden brother, or the silver brother deciding to simply shoot more often.
  • The "Behemoth MT-13" is a near Damage-Sponge Boss required to be fought in order to clear Alice's Request in the third DLC. A Tank equipped with a knockback-inducing twin Gatling guns, high-damage missiles, ability to summon Drones at certain intervals,highly damaging ram and spin attack (which has the potential to One-Hit Kill you even on Easy Mode),and also further damage-resistance against physical and energy bullets (Photon Swords no longer have their unlimited-by-resistance bonus by the way). Anyone would be there for a long while, firing at the weak spot of the tank while also having to avoid being run over least they wish to be killed in the middle of a fight. One has to wonder how on earth would Alice even be able to put a dent on the bonus dungeon boss on her own if it weren't for the Player character convincing her otherwise.
• That One Sidequest: While Alice's Request in Fatal Bullet was already particularly that challenging for the reasons above (as you have to defeat Behemoth MT-13), Eugeo's Request is arguably even worse since the player has to defeat what is essentially a Superboss that is the Abyss Guide, at level 220 (or 295 in Extreme difficulty!), not to mention that it spawns literally in the middle of the forest, in which the same trick that can be used to defeat the regular Abyss Guide in it's normal spawn ponit does not work anymore. Doing this sub-quest will very usually result in a Total Party Kill. Good luck!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Fatal Bullet (and to a slight extension, Integral Factor) suffers from this despite the "Choose your story" tagline that the game suggests it has. Regardless of the dialogue options you pick, characters always react the same way, so being a Deadpan Snarker or a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander makes no difference. The Game-Favored Gender means a female protagonist and male ArFa-Sys get no accommodation in dialogue whatsoever. For the affinity scenes where the Player Character dates one of the game-original cast members, they MUST pick the "intended" choice for the event to proceed to the bed scenes whereupon the protagonist is a Chaste Hero that never works beyond Ship Tease. For the battle royale with Kirito's group as well as the Duel Boss Kureha battle, they MUST win or the story will not progress (compounded by similar moments with Bazalt Joe where it's entirely possible for the player to get obliterated, respawn, and try again despite the story conditions). Though the worst offender would have to be the entire plot itself in New Game Plus, where despite the protagonist showing vague but still noticeable signs of remembering the entire events of the game,they do not even attempt to change the course of the plot.
  • Kirito Mode in Fatal Bullet is this in spades. While the event was obviously made specifically for those who wanted to relive in the canon Death Gun arc and is full of Mythology Gags. However, while it's a fairly faithful adaptation of the anime (slightly tweaked to fit into the gameverse continuity timeline), this is all that is included for playing from Kirito's POV with no original story whatsoever. Even worse, once you complete it (with the only incentive being a mandatory step for the Golden Ending) there's no reason to ever play Kirito Mode again, as all he can do is run around playing fields and dungeons from the main game but with pre-set equipment and skills; the only unique things he gets are the Affinity scenes for the cast, and the Affinity levels carry from your main game so you don't even have to grind them as Kirito.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Hollow Realization is a good contender for most well-received game. Mostly because once the latter had its Downloadable Content, the game was packed to the brim with content and nailed the feeling of being in an MMO recreation of Aincrad amazingly well, being seen as easily the peak of the more traditional SAO titles.
  • Fatal Bullet set the bar high for SAO games solely from a gameplay perspective. Despite the overall So Okay, It's Average verdict from reviewers, it's received generally positive reviews from fans. The game is praised for its solid game mechanics, versatile choice of weapons and equipment in combat, and being a refreshing change from the RPG style of previous SAO games.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Yuuki appearing as a Post-Final Boss in Hollow Fragment was not expected, as she hadn't even made a voiced appearance in the anime at the time of the game's release.
  • Black Lotus had a surprise appearance in Lost Song. This was well before the crossover game Accel World VS Sword Art Online had come out.
  • Alice and Eugeo appearing in Hollow Realization and Accel World VS Sword Art Online as DLC, shocked everyone. With the former, it was before the Alicization arc of the anime had even been announced.
  • Accel World VS Sword Art Online:
    • Tin Writer, Kawahara's Author Avatar, was quite a surprise.
    • Yuna from Ordinal Scale showing up in Accel World vs Sword Art Online was a big shocker to everyone given that in the gameverse timeline, OS shouldn't even exist yet.
    • Graphite Edge from Accel World. He had yet to have an anime appearance at this stage. But even more surprising is the fact he's implied to be voiced by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka.
  • Fatal Bullet:
    • Subtilizer showing up as the Big Bad of the DLC story line was a very big shocker.
    • Sachi, of all characters, showing up as part of post-game DLC, which might just be the most shocking character appearance to date, given that she was not Spared by the Adaptation in the game continuity.
• Vanilla Protagonist: The Player Character of Fatal Bullet has been hit hard with this. They're a Heroic Mime with little to no personality outside of being a Nice Guy, yet everyone in-game treats them like the epitome of goodness (even more than Kirito). But the problem is everything we know about the Player are all Informed Attributes given by other characters they converse with. So rather than the real life player projecting themselves onto this custom character, it's the in-game characters that project themselves onto them.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet seems to have done this for a lot of SAO detractors, due to the player being a custom character and not Kirito.
  • As soon as the Alicization Lycoris trailer dropped it appears to have won nearly everyone over. The graphics absolutely stunning and more polished than any game before. Also, it appears that unlike its predecessors, this game will follow the canon story or at least be very close to it, something which hasn't really been done since Hollow Fragment. This only applies to the first half; fans were not happy when the second half took a massive departure from the light novel and completely removed the Underworld arc, though that ended up being saved for its own separate game Last Recollection.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Many fans have voiced their confusion for Alicization Lycoris of Quinella undergoing Adaptational Modesty by having her wearing her dress in the entirety of the game instead of being in her birthday suit in order to avoid the game being rated M.

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