Sword Art Online: Lost Song

 PlayStation 4
User Score
6.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 90 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 42 out of 90
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 90
  3. Negative: 27 out of 90
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. Jetanwm
    Oct 16, 2016
    4
    Let me preface this by saying that I am actually a fan of Sword Art Online. I'm a gamer at heart and the concept of SAO just appeals to me on a nerdy level.

    Which is why I've created an account to write this review out of just straight up disappointment. I can only assume the people saying that "Even if you're not a fan of SAO you'll like this game!" are paid reviewers. It's the only    Let me preface this by saying that I am actually a fan of Sword Art Online. I'm a gamer at heart and the concept of SAO just appeals to me on a nerdy level.

    Which is why I've created an account to write this review out of just straight up disappointment. I can only assume the people saying that "Even if you're not a fan of SAO you'll like this game!" are paid reviewers. It's the only explanation for this horribly clunky experience. Let's be honest you're buying this because its an SAO game.

    For a game that's literally about one of the most popular games in its world, SAO:LS is just a horrible experience. Its hard to even know where to begin. If you played Hollow Fragment you know that Kirito - chick magnet extraordinaire goes on adventures with his friends and this game is clearly a sequel to that story as it doesn't follow the plot of the anime at all. That's actually a point in its favor. They've improved on the combat, another point in its favor and the world is simply bigger and less hampered by loading screens.

    That's about where my praise stops. The combat is an irritating gripe I have. It's clunky and just feels terrible to use. Every attack has a wind-up animation that lasts FOREVER before you actually swing. This is made all the more infuriating by the existence of enemies that straight up move super fast and attack super fast, causing you to spend a long time fighting them just because they're so damn difficult to hit. I was willing to overlook this aspect of the game as the story seemed to promise something interesting at first.

    But then I distinctly began to feel like the game itself didn't like me. Like I was being actively punished for liking the anime its based on. Combat while flying was cool at first and handled intuitively, even if slow as hell. But the combat just simply lacks depth. You can dodge and block and swing your weapon but its rather pointless to do any of that as you're constantly being mobbed by anywhere from 5-20 monsters. It's much simpler to spam your AoE attack until you're out of mana and what for it to recharge before going in. The targeting system is just a pain to use. You can lock on to targets but that hardly matters when your character will swing wildly at whatever is closest to you and not in the direction you're telling the character to go. Do you enjoy not seeing mobs come up behind you with no warning and smacking you in the face, knocking you down and preventing you from moving for a bit? I sure as hell don't but the devs think I do.

    The tutorial didn't mention what half my UI was for and it wasn't until four hours into the game that I actually figured out why I had a mail icon on my loading screens. I had to look up a guide to figure out what the hell the "Union" bar does. The map is just straight up ineffective and for a game that's supposed to have flying, they limit how high you can go which doesn't cover the areas you want to go through on the map sometimes. Having your stamina bar deplete while flying is just stupid and prolongs the game unnecessarily. The dungeons are all very cookie-cutter and not memorable.

    But I was willing to forgive all of it: Until I got to the bosses. The first few bosses were nothing special. Fight them, don't die, dodge attacks. I was used to it by that point. But then at one point you get assaulted by FOUR wyverns. These guys immediately knocked out the rest of my party and forced me to fight it alone. But even THAT wasn't enough. I had to trick the game into glitching it. You see a group of guys offer to help you by keeping two of the wyverns busy. But if you fly over to them they can aggro more than one letting you fight them one on one. You literally HAVE to do it this way otherwise you get two wyverns that fly into you one after another stunlocking you and killing your party. That fight took fifteen minutes.

    "Whatever." I had told myself, headache forming. "It's still SAO and maybe I can just grit my teeth and bear through this absolutely abysmal combat." How wrong I was. You see after you fight the Wyverns you fight another boss after the next dungeon. This boss took me twenty minutes to beat down. That one wasn't so bad because it didn't have any weird stunlocking attacks but it was literally just a grind to bring the health bar down to zero. It was obviously done to prolong the game time.

    But when I got to the next area was when I knew the game truly despised me. The next area begins with a simple exploration. During this exploration I came across a huge dragon and thought "Oh cool, world boss. Maybe this game is redeeming itself." I locked onto it and prepared for a fight.

    It was level 600. I was level 150. It took me a moment to grasp how truly screwed I was as he decimated my party and then CHASED ME AROUND THE ENTIRE MAP ONLY STOPPING WHEN HE GLITCHED ON A ROCK.

    This game is absolutely abysmal. You'll only play through it if you're an SAO fan and even then that's iffy.    … Expand
  2. Datamari
    Dec 20, 2015
    4
    Well, even as a Sword Art Online fan, I can't recommend this.
    Yes, it's another anime game, and just like the last ones, it really doesn't do much to be good. Yes, it has some pretty easy controls, and the online is pretty fun, but that's really all there is. The combat is repetitive, the plot is paper thin, and literally EVERYTHING is recycled and reused. If you like Sword Art Online,    Well, even as a Sword Art Online fan, I can't recommend this.
    Yes, it's another anime game, and just like the last ones, it really doesn't do much to be good. Yes, it has some pretty easy controls, and the online is pretty fun, but that's really all there is. The combat is repetitive, the plot is paper thin, and literally EVERYTHING is recycled and reused. If you like Sword Art Online, you won't enjoy this. If you're not a fan, you won't enjoy this. I know there wasn't much to this review, but what I mentioned really ruined the game for me.

    Sword Art Online: Lost Song gets a 4/10.    … Expand
  3. TsukasaHiiragi
    Feb 21, 2016
    4
    I only got this game because it was significantly on sale, and whilst I'm not really a fan of SAO series, I was a fan of the .hack series, and this unfortunately isn't even half as good as the original PS2 .hack games and this is also quite possibly one of the most frustrating Jrpgs I've ever played, the control and camera features are dreadfully bad, if you could zoom the camera out soI only got this game because it was significantly on sale, and whilst I'm not really a fan of SAO series, I was a fan of the .hack series, and this unfortunately isn't even half as good as the original PS2 .hack games and this is also quite possibly one of the most frustrating Jrpgs I've ever played, the control and camera features are dreadfully bad, if you could zoom the camera out so you could see more of whats happening in combat, that would be something but you can't even do that so most of the time your being hit by mobs who are off screen because the insane design decisions, this game is a VITA port and it clearly shows, the PS4 version doesn't really have anything extra to offer.

    The targetting system is just as bad as the camera, you can lock onto targets but the camera constantly messes up, and if you try to move the camera so you can see whats going on, nope you can't do that because left/right cycle through targets so in the heat of battle, most of the time you can't clearly see whats going on. You only ever control Kirito, the AI controls your companions who occasionally suffer from poor AI scripting and will refuse to do simply things like heal themselves, or attack everything in sight or not buff your character. Equipping characters is a choir, you can only do that in taverns or Inn - and you can't quickly cycle through the characters, its all drawn out and pointless.

    Aerial Battles are the worst, the design and implementation of this system just doesn't work, not only do you have to fight the control system...which is 90% of the time the sole reason you're getting hit, your also fighting the targetting system or the flight system itself....none of it works particularly well. Heck even regular battles can be just as bad, with some monsters being way to big that you can't see whats happening because of the poor camera controls. The monsters are recycled so heavily its not even funny.

    Multiplayer is useless, the custom characters are not custom at all since there are literally the most minimal options available, 2 hair styles per race, 2 skin colors..yadda yadda...no effort was put into the game at all.

    The story is...um what story? There isn't really any story just a whole bunch of cut scenes where the team experiences certain events like everyone trying on cat ears, or visiting an in-game festival. When the actual story and plot shows up, you quickly forget it about it because thats how thin the story is.

    Its a real shame since this game could have been amazing if this game wasn't a port and actually designed for the PS4, the huge design flaws, limitations of the VITA are all painfully apparent, far too much recycled monsters/content. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone, even SAO fans since its just one giant mess.    … Expand
  4. Daymarus1337
    Jan 16, 2016
    4
    Как эта игра получила 6.7/10?!Остановите планету,я сойду.Есть кучу более годных игр с меньшей оценкой.Не стоит тратить время на эту игру,даже фанатам этого аниме.
  5. Adriella01
    Feb 22, 2020
    3
    I could write the same critique as I did for Re: Hollow Fragments, but I will spare my time.
    So they released this one about 3 months later after Hollow Fragments and did not improve 1 thing.
    Same pointless conversations en mass and same old engine graphics for a 2015 game. Music 5/10

Awards & Rankings

46
#46 Most Shared PS4 Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
63

Mixed or average reviews - based on 32 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 27 out of 32
  3. Negative: 3 out of 32
  1. PSNStores
    Mar 19, 2016
    40
    It doesn’t do anything interesting to make itself stand out, so I would advise anyone who values their time and money to stay away.
    Read full review
  2. Games Master UK
    Feb 9, 2016
    43
    To see such frustrating limitations enforced upon what could have been a defiantly meaty JRPG world is a deal-breaking shame. [Jan 2016, p.81]
  3. GameGrin
    Feb 4, 2016
    70
    Much more than a graphical upgrade to the Sword Art Online universe, but not the leap forwards it appears at first.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »