Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Review – Long Shot Hits the Mark

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Review

Like many others who have watched the Sword Art Online anime, the first arc is undoubtedly my favorite one. Despite that, the Gun Gale Online setting rivaled that of Sword Art Online, though the plot at that point had begun to deteriorate. When Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet was announced as the next game in the video game adaptations, I was immediately interested given my knowledge of the setting. This title also marks the series’ first foray on the Xbox platform.

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is the follow-up title to Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization. While the game takes place after Hollow Realization, the game now follows a customizable silent protagonist. Like the anime, Fatal Bullet will include the canon Death Gun incident in the Gun Gale Online setting. While the canon event does occur, the game follows a different timeline continuing along from previous games. Fans of the franchise will be happy to hear that the main cast and characters from previous games will be making a return. Personally, an original story with only brief mentions of the original cast would have been preferred, though the upcoming Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online is likely to scratch that itch.

The game follows the protagonist who, in his or her first day in the game, stumbles across an extremely rare AI, ArFA-Sys. After this, the protagonist meets some of the games most famous characters and becomes quickly recognizable in the game. The plot is quite cliched, but it is to be expected and does not do a particularly bad job. Overall, the game’s narrative will be enjoyed by fans of Sword Art Online, but newcomers to the series should not expect a masterpiece of a plot.

A third-person shooter, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet remains a role-playing game. The game features a typical leveling system, though players are free to choose what stats to level up and what skills to learn. The stats leveled up affects the damage you do, among other things, but perhaps more importantly as you begin the game, they affect what weapons you can wield. Taking place in a shooter MMO, Fatal Bullet features battles against AI as well as other “players” within the game. The game’s load times are not extremely long but are frequent enough to be noticeable. Also, the game does have online functionality, though players would be wise to stick to the single-player portion of the game.

While the gameplay at its core still felt like a typical anime-based game, the combat and mechanics were surprisingly enjoyable. Particularly, the shooting and movement mechanics felt great, despite obviously not being as precise or fluid as some other third-person shooting franchises. The game allows for more precise aiming or an assist mode that is less accurate, but easier to control and keep your enemy in your sights. Though the game does allow for the use of melee weapons, I had the best times using the various guns. Simply put, the word I would use to describe the gameplay of Fatal Bullet is fun.

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“Particularly, the shooting and movement mechanics felt great…”

Aesthetically speaking, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet looks almost exactly as the anime had depicted Gun Gale Online, just not in an animation style. Unfortunately, that means the game has a lot of darker, seemingly dull environments. The game’s characters also appear visually pleasing and unique relative to one another. The game also features voiced dialog which is mostly acceptable, though at times the voice acting sounds somewhat hollow.

Overall, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is perhaps the best Sword Art Online game thus far. While the game’s setting does detract a bit from the visuals, the gameplay and overall world of Gun Gale Online more than makeup for it. The gameplay of Fatal Bullet was simply fun, and though I would relish the opportunity to play a standalone Gun Gale Online title, Fatal Bullet has definitely filled that gap for the time being.

*** A PS4 code was provided by the publisher ***