Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is the fourth Sword Art Online game set in the alternate game universe that started with Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment where Kirito actually proceeded to clear all 100 floors in the VRMMORPG Sword Art Online. Released exclusively for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. Whereas Lost Song was set in ALO, Hollow Realization has the characters now playing the beta Sword Art: Origin. Instead of taking place in the floating castle of Aincrad, it is set in areas on the ground Ainground, not that there are any differences since the floating castle was huge and looked like normal plains and fields anyway.
Hollow Realization has a terrible tutorial that doesn't really help in introducing the player into the combat system. You will definitely have to stick with it for a few hours in order to start learning the nuances, and how the skill system works. The combat system doesn't reach the complexities of Hollow Fragment but is definitely a significant step up from the relatively straightforward Lost Song. Taking inspiration from MMOs, your character (who may or may not be Kirito depending on your preferences), has multiple palettes which you can allocate skills to. Sword Skills are special attacks that uses SP and are much more powerful than your normal attacks.
Sword Skills are exclusive to each weapon (which ranges from swords, to axes, to clubs and daggers) and are flashy. You're even able to connect multiple Sword Skills together to negate the cooldown. Other Skills could be buffs/debuffs, healing or passive boosts. All skills have a cooldown period after use. In addition to mapping skills to the face buttons, you can map them to a pop-up menu using the left shoulder button (bringing the ability to hot key another eight skills) and a much larger but more cumbersome menu where you scroll using the directional buttons on the bottom of the screen by pressing Select.
While Sword Skills will be your main source of damage, your normal attack will help to regain SP. You can also jump, parry, dash and send basic orders to the rest of your party (such as chaining Sword Skills together for massive damage against bosses). Your party now consists of three additional characters, who can be characters from Sword Art Online or random NPCs that you befriend. Each party member can take on specific roles such as an Attacker, Buffer, Tank etc.
If Kirito's HP reaches zero, it is not game over. Other party members may revive you, although the more you get revived, the longer it takes each time. Once all party members die, then it is game over which reloads you to the last save point. There are gigantic environments to explore and a huge amount of content not only in the base game but the free updates as well. For reference, the base game is nearly 3GB but the updates total 2GB, which leads to the new story scenario Warriors of the Sky. However, environments are mostly similar. We get a desert, jungle, lake (which has some pretty scenery), plains and ruins.
Unfortunately, monster variety is low because you will quickly encounter recolored enemies and you'll keep encountering them for the rest of the game. Luckily, since enemy encounters don't take too long it isn't too bad. Battle music is the best in the series yet which does not get old. Kirito starts at Level 1 this time around and levelling up takes a while as experience points are scaled (i.e. defeating a weak enemy will only give you 1 experience point). Although beating the NM and HNM enemies will quickly shoot your level up, making most of the story bosses from manageable to really easy.
"NM" and "HNM" enemies have multiple health bars and require a little bit more coordination for your party to defeat quickly. Even with the optimization provided by the updates, the game struggles on the Vita with heaps of pop in and choppy framerate. It makes timing your attacks a little bit trickier but it is far from unplayable and still heaps of fun. Despite the developer promising improved relationship/romance mechanics, it's still as boring and bland as Hollow Fragment. The mechanics effectively boils down to pressing the same button again and again to slowly build up the relationship meter with your character of choice.
The story is told in a visual novel style with character portraits, utilizing all the same voice actors as in the anime. Side events involve heading to a specific area or talking to a specific character to then watch a series of cutscenes, which can go on for a while, severely breaking the pacing. This is because the side events come in huge chunks at a time after every major story event. You'll trigger 2-8 for the various side characters each time and can take up to an hour to complete them all if you are the type of player who finishes them all before moving forward in the game.
The story builds upon all the playable characters from the previous three games by adding even more into the cast such as Kizmel (from the Sword Art Online Progressive series of light novels) and new character Premiere. The crux of the story is similar to past games where the characters meet up with Premiere, an odd acting AI NPC with no parameters set and thus is a blank slate. Kirito and gang help her while exploring the game's world.
The story is definitely the weakest aspect of the game. Since it is basically going through Premiere's story quest which is not in line with what they expected and basically a glitch in the game. It tries to put in deeper elements such as NPCs being real characters (because if they die, they do no respawn, rather they are replaced with new NPCs with new backstories, personalities and appearances) but it feels melodramatic, especially with the way Kirito acts. There are heaps of fetch quests or monster slaying quests, which are the main source of income in the game.
Money is actually fairly hard to build up if you want to frequently enhance your weapons. Quests will also pop up during exploration and beating several may unlock new ones with better rewards. Hollow Realization is definitely one for the fans since most of the story is fan service and how all the girls loves to be in Kirito's company and vies for his attention. However, of course, his true love is still Asuna and the dialogue between them can be funny. It is recommended to have played the previous two games but is not essential.
Similarly, having read the Progressive light novels will allow you to understand the references from Kizmel's quests but the game is still enjoyable without that knowledge. The last section of the game dragged on for a bit since you defeated the main antagonist and you'd expect to face the final boss right after or at the very least, very soon. However, it turns out that there is another area with several large maps you have to traverse, forced to fight multiple field bosses, before you get to the final boss. At that point, you can sense how close you are and the long-ish road to the end point can test your patience for the impatient players.
At least the final boss was a suitable challenge and a lot of fun, being more chaotic and a little bit more reliant on team-commands than previous bosses. Assuming you take the time to explore the environments and fight most of the monsters to level up, it'll take you 45-55 hours to finish the main story. Then there's the post-game which is mainly provided by the Warriors of the Sky update, comprising of a new area with multiple dungeons to explore, new story quests, a one-on-one duel system (which makes slight tweaks to HP and abilities), Sacraments where you must protect your bases while defeating the bosses, level cap increasing to 80 and adding in Seven and Rain from Lost Song as party members. It takes another 7-10 hours to complete.
Warriors of the Sky has partially unvoiced cutscenes which takes some time to adjust to. Unfortunately, the additional story provided is bare bones. It introduces a mysterious hooded character spying on Kirito and the group but we don't get to see who they actually are. It's mainly for teasing the purchasable DLC which has a lot more additional story content. There is also a multiplayer mode which you can play solo or online.
Overall, Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is a fun game. It takes a few hours in order to get into it but the combination of exploration and unlocking more skills and weapons to use is addictive. The story isn't exactly the best and most of the plot is fan service but Hollow Realization is definitely recommended for fans of the anime and the previous games. While the Vita version is playable, the PS4 version is definitely the superior version with better button configuration (thanks to the additional triggers) and much smoother framerate.
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