During this year’s Anime Expo, Game Producer Yosuke Futami held a presentation for Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization at the Bandai Namco community stage and shared with us the latest information about the game.
A new character is shown, “Genesis” who is an original character to the Sword Art Origin world. He is also known as ‘Black Swordsman’ so of course for people who know about Sword Art Online and are familiar with the character Kirito, who is also a Black Swordsman so it should be pretty interesting to see these two character cross paths in the game.
The Town of Beginnings is shown. This is the beginning level in the Sword Art word. There will be lots of story and character communication. Asuna is shown in the picture and Futami explains as you get more friendly with her you can hold her hand or if you get more friendly you can even carry her around town. You can also do the same thing to male characters as well.
There are more than 300 characters to interact with including NPCs and all of them are available to join your party as well as the characters from the main series. You can perform various actions with them such as conversation, messaging and even equipment exchange.
The Stages of Hollow Realization are shown and Futami explains with the beautiful graphics you will be able to explore many different types of environments. New stages are shown, La Fastille and a Desert showing a massive sand storm in the distance.
Futami explains details on Raid Boss Battle. In this mode you will battle with three other parties with a total of up to 16 characters. This is much more like a MMO setting and you can even become a raid leader and give commands to the other parties.
A live demo for the raid boss battle is shown. The demo was created a few days prior to Anime Expo and is exclusive footage being shown first time in the US. On the battle field party members are indicated by a blue circle and you can run into it to give them commands. Futami explains in the center of the boss is a damage multiplier that will keep increasing as you land successful attacks with you and your party members. Each boss has a weak point and for the boss that Futami was fighting you had to attack the legs and it would not be able to stand for a while. While battling characters will suggest certain actions to use on the battle field which will cause a link attack for increased damage.
Futami explains that a good basic strategy is to go for the boss’s weak point and with the boss down give commands to the other party members to attack it together. Much like the anime series, the boss will be given a new battle style when it’s health gets to a certain percent. The boss will gain new abilities and even summon additional monsters to the battle field. You can command your other party members to take care of the smaller enemies, and have your main party focus on the boss.
You want to make sure you manage your items and battle abilities to make the fight more manageable. Futami says he wants the player to have the same experience from the hit Anime, fighting huge boss battles as Kirito with a massive alliance. The game is still currently in development and Futami-san stated that the team is working very hard to get it out as soon as possible. A collector’s edition of the game is shown and features special high quality figures of Asuna and Kirito made by Banpresto and will be exclusive to the US.
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization will launch in Fall 2016 on Playstation 4 and Vita and I am personally excited to hear more about this title in the coming months. Check out a the newest trailer for the game below.