Echoes of Aincrad

The 55 Percent Steam Split Tells You Exactly What This Is

Echoes of Aincrad is not the big modern action RPG win Sword Art Online fans have been waiting years for. It’s messier than that. On Steam, it’s sitting at 55% positive from 678 reviews, which lands it in Mixed. OpenCritic is even colder: 64.7 from Top Critics, only 28.2% recommended, and a Weak tag. IGDB’s media number is higher at 77.0, but that’s from one outlet, so I wouldn’t build your whole purchase decision around it. The real picture is split, and honestly, that split makes sense.

Because if you come in as an SAO diehard, there’s a very specific hook here that matters: for once, you’re not just watching Kirito be Kirito again. You build your own character and live through Aincrad from the inside. That sounds small on paper, but for this series, it’s the thing. The 100-floor castle has that distance, that scale, that “I’m actually climbing this thing” spectacle, and when the Japanese anime cast is back, with Matsuoka, Tomatsu, Ichinose, and more, the mood clicks. Push Square also called out the English voice work, and yeah, the audio does a lot of heavy lifting for the darker death-game vibe.

But take the SAO filter off, and it gets a lot harder to defend. The quest structure burns out fast: town hub, marker, fight recycled enemies, then a boss version of something you’ve basically already fought. Repeat. The world looks impressive at first, and The Games Machine calling it breathtaking on first sight tracks with that first impression. But then the rails show. Invisible walls, limited exploration, reused biomes, reused threats. Compared to Bandai Namco’s own Tales of Arise, which has way more texture in its exploration and storytelling rhythm, Echoes of Aincrad feels thin way too often.

The Combat Has Bite, But The Game Keeps Feeding You The Same Meal

Here’s where it gets good: the combat is easily the strongest layer. You’ve got six weapon types: sword, dagger, rapier, mace, two-handed axe, and two-handed sword. Each one has its own Sword Skill tree, and the three-skill quick-swap shortcut gives the fighting just enough buildcraft to keep you experimenting. Precise dodges and parries can break enemy posture, which opens up counter combos, and the AI partner synergy actually gives boss fights some snap when positioning and timing line up.

That’s why I get the fans who are calling this one of the more playable SAO games. DualShockers framed it as the most fun SAO has been in game form, and I can see that angle if what you want is a character-driven climb through Aincrad with enough action systems to chew on. The third-person setup is straightforward, the partner system fits the fiction, and when a boss fight is tuned right, it sells the fantasy better than the story does.

The problem is the game doesn’t trust its own best parts enough. Instead of building varied scenarios around those weapons and partner mechanics, it leans on repetition. The story also takes hours to properly move, and the characters stay thinner than they should. That’s a huge miss, because the custom protagonist should be the whole point. RPGFan’s low-end reaction makes sense there: if you sell me on “my character inside the death game,” then don’t just use that as a skin over the same old structure.

Buy It Like A Fan, Not Like A Blind Action RPG Purchase

So my overall score for this slice of the game is a 6.3 out of 10. Not a disaster. Not secretly great. It’s a fan-first action RPG with one genuinely strong identity hook, a decent combat spine, and a whole lot of padding around it. If you want to live through the Sword Art Online death game as your own character, and you can forgive repeated quest loops because the setting still works on you, this is aimed straight at you.

If you’re just looking for a strong current-gen Japanese action RPG, though, I’d be careful. Without affection for SAO, Echoes of Aincrad starts looking like a pretty average ARPG with better branding than structure. The combat can land, sure, but the quest design, thin characters, and narrow exploration drag it down. Tales of Arise is the brutal comparison here, because it shows what Bandai Namco can do when exploration, pacing, and party drama have more density.

My buying advice is simple: start on standard difficulty and see if the basic loop actually works for you before you romanticize the idea of the harsher version. The permadeath Death Game Mode sounds like the mode that best matches the source material, but locking that behind a paid premium edition is a bad look. Add slow pacing and no dialogue pause, and suddenly the most authentic mode also sounds like the one most likely to test your patience. If you’re price sensitive, wait for a discount. If you’re an SAO lifer, you already know whether that Aincrad pull is strong enough to carry the rough parts.