Fans of Sword Art Online will really appreciate this little gem, while people not familiar with it should watch the anime first.

SAO Fatal Bullet disrupts the familiar VRMMORPG game dynamics found in the past entries of the series and embraces a new third person shooter premise. A bit repetitive and maybe forgettable experience, but a fun one nonetheless.

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is a game that is great for fans of the series. Unfortunately, I do not see this game doing well outside of that. The introduction is so painfully long and uninteresting I can see many players stop playing because of it. Also while the game is well rounded, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this game that offers anything unique compared to other franchises. The main proponent is that this is a realistic game based off the anime.

This world favors guns and blasters (and rather rare laser swords), so the combat system is quite unusual for the genre: it plays more like anime-styled Destiny or The Division than traditional JRPG. Which is good, because fights make for the most of gameplay in Fatal Bullet. [Issue#228, p.58]

Fatal Bullet isn’t a bad game, but it didn’t hold my interest for very long. It’s fun to be surrounded by familiar faces from the anime series, and I could see glimmers of depth in Fatal Bullet’s combat and upgrade systems. However, the poor story pacing and the repetitive nature of exploration dragged it down. While it’s a good change of pace for games based on SAO, it still lacks the polish needed to really stand out.

Although Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is lovely to look at, and the core game mechanics work well, it is the repetition and the stale dialogue that quickly diminished any fun I was having with the game.

At the very least, Gun Gale Online could have been a world worth exploring. But no, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet offers nothing to keep you but freely gives more than enough to make you wish you had the time you spent playing it back.