"Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet" Review - Please just kill me now, I've had enough

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Yeeeaaaaaaah......
Not that this will come as a surprise to anybody on the face of the Earth, but it isn't good.
There were so many subtitles I wanted to give this review: "More like Sucks Art Online," "More like Sword Art On-loading," "More like Grind Gale Online," "Fan-fiction Bullet," "Bullet literal hell," and my personal favorite: "I wish they'd Akihiko Try-aba'd," to name just a few.
Look, I didn't exactly expect a revolutionary product. I didn't even expect a good one. But even with such low expectations, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet managed to be worse than I could have imagined. I don't think anyone is on the fence about this. If you were going to buy this game, chances are you already have. However, let me tell you why you should steer clear, just in case you happen to start watching the anime years from now and decide to delve into this.
This is a television-licensed game, and with all such games, only one question need be asked of the story: How deep does the fan-fiction rabbit hole go? Before I answer that question, allow me to provide a brief overview of what this game is based off of.
Sword Art Online is an anime about virtual reality MMOs, and despite its popularity, the weeaboos don't like it, which makes me inclined to like it. Fatal Bullet takes place in Gun Gale Online, the third (and weakest) of the games that the Sword Art Online story encompasses. At this point in the show, series protagonist Kirito has been enlisted by the government to infiltrate Gun Gale Online to investigate rumors of a player named "Death Gun," who claims to be able to kill people in real life by killing their avatars. Kirito, being a survivor of Sword Art Online (wherein death in the game means death in real life) decides to lend a helping hand behind the backs of the usual suspects, including his love interest, Asuna. As he enters this new game, he finds that he has the avatar of a woman for some reason (in what I suspect is an attempt to please a very small subset of the fanbase), and he meets a sniper named Sinon, who is by far the show's most interesting character. Each having their own reasons, the two team up in an attempt to take down Death Gun and learn the secret behind his crimes.
With all of this in mind, here's what I was expecting from the fan-fiction rabbit hole: The plot wouldn't deal with Death Gun, but we'd run into woman-body Kirito and Sinon and maybe help them on a quest that happens to intertwine with our own. It would be a sensible way to tie the two plots together.......surely they couldn't get more creative than that with the license.......right?
Well...how about we get properly started, and I'll let you be the judge?

As I reluctantly started up Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, I was greeted with a character creation screen with a surprising amount of depth. I'll give the game this, it doesn't skimp on character creation options. I created my generic anime boy protagonist, readied myself to like food and be oblivious to the fact that every woman around me wants to...*cough* stare down the barrel of my pump-action shotgun *cough*, and ventured forth into the game. Upon entering GGO, a girl with bubblegum pink hair called out to me and introduced herself as my "gorgeous childhood friend." If this were an anime, my face would have flattened, wavy lines would've appeared over my head, the background would've changed to some blue/purple/black backdrop, and I would've mumbled about how we were off to a fantastic start. This childhood friend, Kureha, guided me through the tutorial as a way to introduce that a super-rare item was supposed to drop during today's tournament. We ran into some other characters, beat a mini-boss, and soon enough Kureha ended up accidentally triggering a warp gate that effectively separated us. My character was now in a distinctive chamber with strange technology in it. Upon going up to this technology, a voice announced that ARFA-sys registration was complete (or something like that), at which point I was tasked with creating another avatar for what I assumed (correctly) would be a loyal follower a-la Dragon's Dogma. After creating my new follower, a bullet barely missed me, and I thought "Ah, that'll be Sinon, and we'll have Kirito give us some crucial story information." But the camera zoomed out and it wasn't Sinon.
That's when I realized it...the fan-fiction rabbit hole went deeper than I thought. The camera zoomed out to show that the gunman who missed me was none other than the character I've heard referred to as "baby's first Waifu" *leaps up and sprints to the bathroom so forcefully that it knocks down the bar stool that I write these from and vomits profusely for hours upon hours, sobbing in-between bouts of more vomiting at the sheer trauma of having to use that word, only to return to vomiting in spite of my body's protestations that I have nothing else to throw up, so surely I'm not actually being infected by anything, but my head shakes as I say to myself, "When you use the word 'Waifu,' there is no escape, there is no feeling better, there is no rest, there is only vomiting, forever"*: Asuna. Now, in the show, Asuna never entered GGO. That right there would've been fanfiction-y enough, but when Kirito then entered the fray, he was wearing his outfit from Sword Art Online (the game within the show, not the show itself), and he didn't have his woman-body GGO avatar. So, not only did we have the show's signature Wai...*readies trash can*...fu, we also had the more popular of Kirito's looks. "Fine," I thought, "I'll roll with it." My prediction that Kirito would give crucial story info turned out to be accurate, and he told me that my new follower was a new AI called the "ARFA-sys," and that this AI was needed to gain access to a brand new in-game location with rare items. More exposition happened, I was given a grappling hook kind of a thing that I'll complain about when we get to gameplay, and Kirito said he could see us being friends.

"Great." I thought, "It's Sonic Forces all over again."

Then, Kirito invited me, Kureha, and my ARFA-sys (who I gave the distinctly anglo name "Amelie" in an attempt to spite the weeaboos) to an in-game celebration he was having with "a few friends."

Call me naive, call me dumb, but I didn't think anything of that statement. I thought for sure that this circle of a "few friends" would be him, Sinon, Asuna, and possibly one or two new characters.


I was not expecting to find the entire cast of Sword Art Online present at this celebration. If I'd been drinking something, I would've spat it out as soon as the camera faded in on the cast. The gang was literally all there, in their most famous outfits. They went around making their introductions, and I had many reactions: "You never entered this game!" "This isn't the kind of game you would like!" "Wha?! How do you still have that dragon thing?!" "You weren't there, but I guess it makes sense," "Why do you still look like a fairy?!" "YOU DIED! OF AIDS!!! IN THE REAL WORLD!!!"

Fastforward a little bit, and I saw Sinon talking with a character I recognized. This character made a threat against me, and after he left, Sinon told me that "he [wasn't] a bad guy." I sat there, dumbstruck. "Yes, he is!" I thought, "He literally tried to rape and kill you! His Japanese voice actor was creepy as hell and he screamed the words 'Asada-san! *sharp gasp* Asada-san!' like a complete animal as he did it!"............

Soooo yeah, the fan-fiction rabbit hole is quite deep. Quite. Laughably. Deep. Then they started introducing other characters who evidently already knew Kirito, so I wondered if maybe they were drawing off of the original movies or further into the novels or something like that. In any case, if your experience with SAO is primarily via the show, you're going to find yourself in a pair of glasses and a blue button-up shirt holding what looks like a frying pan with your back against a door.
Anywho, more introductions happen, and we learn that the gist of the story is we're trying to get into that aforementioned new area that can only be opened with the assistance of an ARFA-sys. The story is essentially: "We need to level up enough so that we can survive in there!" with some tidbits of things happening that essentially play into that goal. Then a character mentioned something about "liberating" the area I'd been playing in and I could feel the wavy lines and the purple and black background starting to form around me. Look, it could be that the story really takes off after a while, but I've since stopped playing because this game is terrible. So if the story gets better, sorry, but I'm not sticking around to experience it.

In any case, every character from the show is a potential party member, and I'll give the game this: If you're going to insert characters to appease fans, having them serve some sort of actual gameplay purpose is a sensible way to do so. It would've been better if their supposed "purposes" (such as Asuna being a better healer or Sinon being a quality sniper) actually had any impact, but points for the thought, at least.

*tries to start a paragraph expanding the discussion of the purpose of party members, but just cradles head against knees with feet on the barstool*

Guys, there's so much wrong with this freaking game. I don't even know how to structure this review. Normally I can at least force segways to happen, but so much is wrong and so much of what is wrong is interconnnected with other things that are equally if not more wrong. I thought about making this a one-sentence review saying "Don't buy it," but I'm not that committed to comedy and I try to at least get you some specific information. But I just don't know how. I've already made every joke that I came up with. Baby's first Waifu followed by extended vomiting monologue? Check. Making a phallic innuendo involving pump-action because this is Gun Gale Online? Check. Use of the confused screaming meme to summarize my confusion having come from the show? Check. Those are all the jokes I could think to crack in this review, and the only way I've been able to get this far is by structuring my paragraphs in a way that helps me deliver them. I mean, the thing about it is that it's not as bad as Sonic Forces or Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor! It's objectively at least functional, but there's just so much wrong in so many different places that I can't even put my thoughts together in a professional way. With that in mind, the rest of this review is going to be rambling about everything wrong, followed by some ramblings on what was not wrong. If I did these in video format, then it would be obvious that I'd been hitting the sauce beforehand and that I hadn't put together a script, so the whole video would be me starting off complaints with "And-and-and-and-andyouknowwhatthis Fffffffffff***ing game did next?!" *Doesn't really knock back a glass of bourbon but pretends to do so to emphasize the struggle* Let's get this over with.

This game has to take breaks to load all the freaking time. It's consistently a choice between walking the obscenely long distance to a teleporter or braving the load times with a fast travel. The graphics, textures, and animations are all horrible and stiff. All the text in this entire freaking game is too small, you have to squint if you want to be able to read anything on the screen. Not only that, but the white subtitles often clash with the background. So in addition to having to strain your eyes in order to read anything, sometimes you won't be able to determine what the Japanese voices are saying because you literally can't read the english subtitles.
They attempt to have Bioware-style companion bonding, but it just doesn't work. You walk up to one of the characters and instead of engaging in a conversation with them, you enter a weird visual novel kind of thing where the characters are all trapped in the most bog-standard idle animations possible. These VN segments depict our hero and the other character in a situation far more interesting than anything that happens in the storyline, such as competing in a tournament against Asuna and Kirito. Without fail, every single time, I thought, "Wow, I wish I could be playing this instead of just reading about it!" It would've been ok or at least less irritating if the content of these interactions didn't adhere so strictly to the anime character binary (where 0 = Doesn't believe in self and 1 = Believes in self after a single motivational sentence from the protagonist). I mean, really now, every interaction for every character is exactly the same, just with different circumstances and backstories. Ugh. From what I've read, it appears that there's something resembling a romance system, but I didn't get far enough in to know for sure. I mean, every interaction with a female character ended with another character telling us some variation of "you look cute together," so I'd say I'm 99% sure such a system exists, but what-freaking-ever.
Oh, and they try to do Bioware-style party banter out in the field, but they don't voice it! They don't voice the party banter! And that's a blessing here, because it's the exact same lines every time, and I can only imagine having to listen to it over and over again! As it stands, you'll hear a party member exclaim, and then what they're supposed to be saying will appear in the clashing white subtitles at the bottom of the screen. And did I mention that it doesn't ever change! I swear on everything good in this world, I've seen my ARFA-sys say "Hey, Kureha! I just thought of a great way to never get lost again!!!" over a hundred times. I guess they didn't want their imitation of Dragon's Dogma to stop with the player-created sidekick.

Gameplay is freaking the worst part of this game. Go figure. Movements are stiff, the reload button only works about half the time, the stupid grappling hook thing that was supposed to make combat feel more fast paced and dynamic is just frustrating and difficult to aim when you're being shot at by a billion enemies that are destroying the framerate. Combat practically plays itself, except you have to press the fire button. Literally the only thing you have to do is aim in the general direction of an enemy and you'll get a predictive sphere that shows you how likely it is that your attack will hit. It's like old-school strategy games a-la XCOM, but bad. You have a wealth of abilities and gadgets you can use, but you have a separate loadout of them for each kind of weapon. In theory, that's a great idea: If you have a shotgun, you might want an ability that temporarily boosts your speed so you can get in and out of range quickly, for example. However, given how you have to assign these abilities to slots from your hub and you can't do it out in the field, it just becomes a hassle when you pick up a new weapon type, want to try it out, but find yourself at a disadvantage because you no longer have your skills.
And the dash ability, which is supposed to help you evade gunfire, doesn't really work unless an enemy is using a non-automatic gun. If you don't have cover, there's literally no way to avoid gunfire, and you'll be without cover a lot!
Oh, and every time you enter an area the game forgets which weapon you were using, and it just defaults you back to the weapon you had in slot 1. It's hard to notice given how none of the guns have any feeling of power behind them and they all feel the same as a result, but it's still something the game does wrong.
Oh, and the game is terribly balanced. Even if you exceed the recommended level for a mission, there's no guarantee that you're actually prepared even if you have updated equipment and the like. Enemies will sometimes still have the ability to take you out in two hits and practically absorb damage like a sponge. Just awful.
This game is desperate to be viewed as an MMO, even though it isn't. That's an admirable enough goal, given how GGO is an MMO in the show, but they go about it the wrong way. When you die, you have to be revived by a squadmate, and if your whole squad is dead, it's game over. I guess that's fine in co-op, but if you're like me and hate the concept of cooperative gaming, that essentially just means that combat gets interrupted for a little while until one of your AI party members decides to come give you a hand. That's just a minor gripe, but it's a gripe.
The way that they really go about being an MMO the wrong way is in the way the AI operate. They are SO. FREAKING. NOISY!!!!!!!! Every single second of this game is filled with your party members jumping, exclaiming, or activating some nondescript ability that doesn't seem to actually do anything. There isn't a single moment of silence when you're out in the field. This is Bandai Namco trying to emulate what it might be like to have other people on your time like you would in an MMO. But there's a reason I don't do the whole MMO thing...People are freaking annoying. It ruins the whole experience if I have to take in combat alongside some bro who won't shut up. I legitimately had to stop playing after a while not just because I wasn't having fun, but because I was starting to get overwhelmed by all the sheer noise.

Now let me talk about some good things. The first good thing is that I haven't seen any microtransactions yet. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but it's worth noting that canonically Gun Gale Online is powered exclusively by microtransactions. Canonically it's a fact that you have to buy the in-game currency in order to get ammo and the like. It would've been easy to justify having microtransactions in this game, but Bandai Namco evidently elected not to, so I do have to point out how great that is, given the circumstances. It could be that this changes online, but I'm at least not seeing anything in the single player.
The second good thing is that Klein's character is intact and utilized pretty effectively. Of course, that just means he does a good job as the girl-crazy comic relief, but the laughter was a great distraction from the despair of playing this game.
The third good thing is that there is quite a lot of variety in the weapons. There's no difference in the way they feel, nor in the way they look (not like you'll ever actually see them anyway), but that would've taken effort, so it's clear that they at least Akihiko Try'aba-d on that front.

I don't want to talk about this game anymore. I just want to forget my time with it. I've definitely experienced worse games in my life, but comparison does nothing to numb the pain. Like, I figured it would be bad, but given that I did like the show (well...until it started to be exclusively filler episodes), I held out some hope that I might get at least some enjoyment out of it, but I didn't. There are definite positives in this game, all of which I laid out, but they alone aren't enough to make a game compelling. Given how much I've bashed this game, the end score might surprise you. Here's the thing, though: fan-fiction elements that cause a story to be weak would be grounds for point loss. Fan-fiction elements, not matter how cringey they are, are not grounds for point loss unless they directly and negatively impact some aspect of the game. The story here is weak, but it isn't because of the fan-fiction. The fan-fiction took away from my experience as someone who came to this game from the show, but it isn't the kind of thing that I can, in good conscience, actually remove points for.
Guys, don't buy Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet. It isn't good. It's not good. Good it is not. It's bad. It's less than not good, it's bad.
My ARFA-sys might have figured out a way to never get lost again, but that knowledge evidently doesn't apply to points.

Let us review:

Gameplay Issues - 1.0
Weak Story - 1.0
Boring Visual Novel inserts instead of actual content - 0.5
So-ho-ho much noise - 1.0
Technical problems (poor graphics/textures, loading times) - 1.0
UI Issues - 0.5

The final score for Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is...


5.0/10 - Mediocre

Better luck next time, Bandai Namco, better luck next time