Echoes of Aincrad: a return that stumbles on accessibility

Trapped once again inside Aincrad's flying castle, players of Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad get to relive the events of Reki Kawahara's famous work from a new perspective. Combining soulslite combat with RPG mechanics, Bandai Namco's title attempts to reinvent the series' formula. But how accessible is it really for players with disabilities?

The lore

Set in a not-too-distant future, the story revolves around a wearable device called the NerveGear, capable of transporting people into Sword Art Online, an immersive virtual reality inspired by role-playing games. On launch day, as many as 10,000 players log in, only for developer Akihiko Kayaba to reveal that the only way to escape the virtual reality they are trapped in is to complete all 100 floors of Aincrad, a massive floating castle filled with monsters and bosses to defeat. If a player gets a game over or someone forcibly removes the NerveGear in the real world, the device will release a lethal electrical shock, killing the player.

Unlike the original work, its anime adaptation, and previous video game titles, Echoes of Aincrad does not exclusively follow Kirito's story. Instead, the game allows players to create their own avatar using the character editor and experience the events of Aincrad from a new perspective, weaving their own journey together with that of the series' iconic characters. This approach is clearly aimed at longtime fans, while also attempting to introduce new players to the work created by Reki Kawahara, although the narrative offers relatively few interesting developments.

Gameplay and Graphics

The gameplay of Echoes of Aincrad, however, moves away from the pure MMO formula one might expect from its story. Instead, it follows a soulslite approach, with attacks built around careful stamina management. Button mashing is not an option: players must learn enemy attack patterns in order to defeat them. During the game, we are also accompanied by NPCs who allow us to perform combined abilities, creating combos with our character to improve our chances during fights. This is complemented by RPG-style character progression and the collection of in-game materials used to craft and upgrade equipment and weapons. The game world is structured as an open map, while each mission takes place in a dungeon filled with enemies to defeat.

The combat system works rather well and gives the game a distinctive and original identity compared to previous titles in the series. What is less convincing, however, is the feeling of exploring Aincrad's cities. Despite developers' pre-launch promises that they would be crowded and lively, they ultimately offer very little in the way of actual interaction, aside from a handful of NPCs who are useful for the crafting system.

The graphics adopt an anime-inspired style, although some design choices are puzzling. The character can walk straight through chairs and benches without any issue, while game assets disappear when the camera gets too close to them. During cutscenes, meanwhile, the characters' lip movements do not always appear to be perfectly synchronized with the English voice acting, seemingly matching the original Japanese performances more closely.

Accessibility

Moving beyond the gameplay and graphics, we analyze, as always, how accessible the title is for players with disabilities. And, spoiler alert, Echoes of Aincrad falls short in several areas from an accessibility standpoint. Let's take a closer look.

Developed by Game Studio Inc. and published by Bandai Namco, the game offers four difficulty levels: Story, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. There is also a fifth mode called Deadly Game, which becomes available after completing the game for the first time, or immediately in the Deluxe and Ultimate editions. In this mode, if the player is defeated, their save data is permanently deleted, forcing them to restart the entire adventure from the beginning.

As mentioned earlier, the game is primarily inspired by soulslite mechanics. Learning enemy attack patterns can be quite challenging, particularly during the early stages of the adventure. However, the various checkpoints scattered throughout each dungeon allow players to recover their health, respawn defeated enemies, and fight them again to level up. As is typical of soulslite games, there is no traditional pause menu. Instead, opening the character management screen provides access to the various settings and options, while leaving the player vulnerable to enemy attacks and allowing ongoing conversations to continue in the background.

During the early stages of the game, players therefore have to choose between focusing on reading the dialogue, which is important for understanding the narrative context, and spending more time navigating menus and customizing their character. Dialogue subtitles, meanwhile, offer no customization options and overlap with the game's menu tab, making them difficult to read in the center of the screen.

On the visual accessibility front, the game offers a handful of options which, while providing limited customization, allow players to partially adapt the experience. These include the ability to enable the minimap, adjust the field of view, keep the camera locked onto the character's movements, disable camera shake, enable camera movement during combined abilities, and display subtitles and the full HUD during missions.

The overall iconography remains fairly easy to read thanks to the use of sans-serif fonts and a degree of visual consistency. Each element is associated with a clearly defined color and symbol, while negative status effects are represented through icons and color coding that reflects their nature, although these are not always immediately noticeable. Similarly, a red line in the center of the screen indicates the direction of incoming enemy attacks.

Items collected during exploration and loot dropped by defeated enemies are also distinguished through icons and colors: green for weapons, yellow for in-game currency, and so on. Adding a marker to the map also allows players to see a beam of light in the distance indicating the direction of their current objective.

When it comes to gameplay controls, accessibility is again limited. Button remapping is almost fully supported, with one exception: one of the two buttons that must be pressed simultaneously to activate each available combined ability remains fixed. Finally, there are no toggles that allow players to replace sustained button presses with a single press for actions that normally require holding a button, although the developers have chosen to make character sprinting available through a single press.

The audio settings are divided into four volume categories: master volume, character voices, music, and sound effects.

Conclusion

Echoes of Aincrad therefore presents itself as an interesting reinterpretation for fans of the Sword Art Online universe, particularly thanks to a more technical and deliberate combat system compared to previous entries in the series. However, when it comes to accessibility, the game has several shortcomings that limit its usability for part of the audience, starting with the lack of dedicated interface customization and more advanced assistance features.

Some choices, such as the nearly complete button remapping, clear iconography, and the ability to modify certain visual elements, nevertheless provide a solid starting point. However, they are not enough considering the complexity of the mechanics on offer.

Echoes of Aincrad remains an interesting experience for Sword Art Online fans and players looking for a more challenging action RPG, but from an accessibility standpoint, it falls short of reaching its full potential, leaving plenty of room for improvements that could make it a genuinely more accessible adventure for a wider audience.