Sword Art Online: Lost Song is the sequel to Hollow Fragment, with the inclusion of all the new characters from the previous game showing up, plus a further three new characters exclusive to the game. It is recommended to have played Hollow Fragment first at the minimum, while also have caught up with at least Season 1 of the anime (preferably Season 2 as well). It takes place within the Sword Art Online universe where technology has progressed to the point that you can fully immerse yourself and your senses into Virtual Reality. Lost Song is an action RPG and it has better battle mechanics than Hollow Fragment.
The battle system is simple and easier to understand. You have one normal attack, one strong attack (which uses stamina), jump and evade. You can block attacks, use Sword Skills or Magic Skills through a combination of the shoulder buttons and a face button. This simplicity works well and means that players can dive in immediately without worrying too much about enemies destroying you. While you originally start off controlling Kirito, you're given the freedom to pick which character you want to play as. You can form a party of up to three characters.
Your party can be consisted of any of the characters from the first game, plus the new game-exclusive characters, and pretty much all of the ALO characters from the light novels. This means that there are a huge amount of playable characters to select from, however, these are mostly aesthetics since each character can equip various types of weapons and their movesets. You can even create your own character but customization options in this area are extremely limited. You can equip various weapons, and each of them have their own sword skills, speed and damage. Weapons range from swords, bows, rapiers, maces, axes and more.
The number of weapons that you can equip gives you a lot of variety but you'll probably use the dual-swords the most just because it's so much cooler. The options are nice though and gives the game even more variety. One of the biggest features of Lost Song is the ability to fly. From the very beginning of the game, you can fly around the area and the environments are huge (for a handheld). This aspects adds a good vertical feeling to the game and when you're soaring through the sky at high speeds, it feels great. The flying controls can be better since it can be clunky especially when hovering and wanting to go higher or lower.
In terms of UI, your character will have a HP bar, MP bar and Stamina bar. Dashing or flying fast will use the stamina bar, which when depleted, you are paralyzed for a short while as it recharges. Otherwise, it will recharge automatically when not in use. The stamina bar doesn't serve much except to discourage you from constantly dashing. Enemies roam around the field and a few of the designs are reused from Hollow Fragment. It adds a few new designs but for the most part, all designs are reused throughout the game with different color palettes again and again. It would be nice if the developers could have added more variety here as you just see these monsters so often that it feels repetitive and lazy.
One cool feature is that they added battle damage to monsters. If you slash at a monster, it will have a red gash, just like the anime. While it doesn't add anything to the game mechanically, it's a cool visual touch. The camera is freely controlled with the right stick, although if you lock onto enemies, then you cannot control the camera anymore as the right stick is then used to shift the target-lock. You will also need to fight the camera when the enemy you have locked onto moves around a lot, which ends up being annoying when fighting multiple monsters in an enclosed area.
The enemies like to move around now, which is frustrating for enemies that fly or hover as it is hard to lock them into place to swing swords against them with. Enemies respawn really quickly which makes grinding great, but not so much when you just want to progress the game. Using items remains clunky as you need to traverse the menu in real-time. As you're sorting through your items item, the game isn't paused. It's true to the source material but not very practical when actually playing and all the enemies are targeting you. It's the same deal with giving commands to team mates, it takes a few menus to get to that point so it's easier to not do it at all.
Unlike with Hollow Fragment, you can level up your character easily and fast. The downside is that enemies will quickly outrank you. If you don't grind too much, expect to have enemies 100+ levels above your own character when playing through the story. That's not even adding to the fact that if you don't use a character in your party, they don't level up at all. You could be playing with a Level 400 Kirito and then have to party up with a Level 100 Lisbeth during a side story.
In terms of story, Lost Song takes place in the alternate timeline first begun with Hollow Fragment. After escaping Sword Art Online, Kirito and his friends enter ALfheim Online (ALO), a fantasy world based on Norse mythology. It covers events of ALO and even briefly covers events such as Mother's Rosario, in its own way of course. In ALO, Kirito meets Rain, a mysterious girl and also Seven, a famous idol both in ALO and in the real world. It is a weak story and filled with fan service, as there are various events with the other main characters.
The story mode is mostly told via text, with limited animated cutscenes and artwork. The story tries to play out like Kirito has a big rivalry with the other guild but the pacing is not tight enough for you to care. You end up learning about Rain, Seven and her guardian Sumeragi, an evil plan, and how Kirito stops it. The ending was abrupt and didn't make much sense in how quickly the attitude of various characters changed. Unfortunately, the dialogue isn't as humorous, quirky or fun as Hollow Fragment, leading to somewhat mediocre dialogue scenes which are boring.
While Lost Song is set in ALO, it takes place over a new area that had opened within the game in an update, which are basically four floating islands. It is impressive with the verticality of these islands, you can fly really high up eventually once the altitude limit is removed. There are heaps of boss battles, some of which take place in the sky but mostly it is in dungeons. They are big bosses but just like the grunts, the enemy models are reused so much which ends up feeling quite generic after a few bosses. Generic is really the theme here because while the game's environments are large, the dungeons are generic caves and ruins.
It is disappointing once you realize that each dungeon looks effectively the same, with only different map layouts. You cannot fly in a dungeon and the game drags in this area, especially in the last third of the game where you end up going into dungeon after dungeon to obtain six orbs. It's obvious and unnecessary padding and slows down the pace that point in the game. The game uses the same voice actors as the anime, but it is Japanese voiceovers only with English subtitles. The English translation this time around is much better, with barely any spelling or grammar mistakes.
It's too bad the game doesn't use the music from the anime, although some of Lost Song's tracks are pretty decent in their own right. There is one town that you keep returning to as your base, it has shops but is not big at all. There are a limited number of things you can do in the town. There are Quests to accept and complete, they are less boring than Hollow Fragment's tedious and repetitive quests, but only barely better. These quests are comprised of fetch quests and monster hunting quests. There are also Extra Quests which are to defeat powerful boss monsters.
Also in the town there will occasionally be spots where you can talk to the main characters to initate character specific side stories. These are a nice distraction from the sparse main story and filled with fan service. Kirito is still as clueless as ever about his charm. After you've finished the main story, there isn't much post-game content. It unlocks the ending to most of the side stories, a new PvP arena which allows you to battle one on one against other main characters, a new dungeon and lastly unlocks most of the monster hunting quests. The Trophies are grindy at best, requiring you to level up sword skills, and character levels.
The game is on the easier side, even when enemies are 100+ levels above you, on Normal difficulty, you can still defeat them easily. The only issue is when the game throws a lot of enemies at you at the same time, and they all spam an attack which knocks you down and keeps you knocked down. Even when you die, you can be revived by other team members, and once your whole party is wiped out, you just restart from the nearest checkpoint. The equipment customization is not as deep as Hollow Fragment, but it is simple enough to easily understand. It remains easier to equip drops from monsters rather than spending money to improve existing equipment.
The graphics are decent and it is not the best looking game on the Vita but it stacks well against a lot of other games. The environments lack the intricate details to make it more immersive. Still, the draw distance when flying high in the sky is fantastic. The game has medium length load times between large areas. Overall, Sword Art Online: Lost Song is a fantastic game for fans of the source material. It can be generic and bland for some players but it's accessibility, fan service and simple fun makes Lost Song a neat game and worthwhile to play.
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