Review: #623
Title: Sword Art Online: Progressive 3
Series: Sword Art Online: Progressive - 3rd volume
Author: Reki Kawahara
Read Before: no
Comments: The third volume of Progressive takes place on the fourth floor. To prevent the plot becoming stale and predictable, the author put in some twists in this level. For one, Kirito loses some of his beta knowledge advantage with the terrain of the fourth floor of the game being flooded with water instead of the desert canyons he had remembered. A bulk of the novel is spent on gathering materials for a boat, and extending the storyline that began in the previous volume with Kizmel. The multiple-floor storyline quest with Kizmel is continued here and becomes quite morale boosting towards the end, when the final climactic battles were occurring. Similarly with the previous volume, all these additional events causes the final floor boss battle to be severely shortened but then again, if every boss battle was painstakingly explained or the repeated plot points of the party being almost wiped out, it would become boring. The author paints a detailed picture of the environments of the third floor and reading through Kirito’s narration of the events from his point of view, it feels as if you were right there inside the game too. Overall, Progressive 3 tells a solid story and the slower paced compared to the mainline volumes means time is taking to explain the mechanics and paint a more solid picture of how everything in Sword Art Online works together.
Rating: 7/10