SAO: Integral Factor Floor 1 Review
Story: So firstly, the game starts with you and your soon-to-be partner, name pending, in a dungeon within the Beta version of Sword Art Online on the final day of Beta Testing. You and your partner encounter Kirito (Wait! Don’t stop reading! I swear he’s not around nearly as much as he is in the other games…at least as far as I’ve played at the time of writing) who gives the two of you some well wishes and such before the Beta shuts down.
When SAO’s official launch begins, you enter the world of Aincrad and soon locate your partner in the Town of Beginnings and the two of you go out to hunt monsters and, mostly, to get your partner used to the game. This leads to meeting Best Character Klein who, while waiting for his friends to find him, meets Kirito (I PROMISE YOU HE ISN’T AROUND AS MUCH AS YOU THINK!) and the monster killing scene from the series plays out fairly the same, only with you and your partner taking part in the lesson and that it’s also a mobile game tutorial on fighting.
After all that, the players of SAO are forcefully warped back to town where Kayaba Akihiko delivers his chilling “You Dead” speech. As one of the only ones with any semblance of initiative, you take off to build your strength in order to stay alive, your partner joining you quickly as seeing you find the resolve to survive this hell snaps her out of her state of panic and causes her to follow your lead.
As you quickly find out when meeting with Klein again, Kirito has gone on ahead and left town to begin his journey as the one, true Jesus-kun. However, that’s fine with you as you soon begin to level yourself and your partner, taking on quests and starting the story in earnest through the most unlikely characters I expected.
Remember those two players that we’re pretty much the punchline of Kayaba’s “The real you” bit? The fat guy pretending to be hot and the scrawny nerd pretending to be a girl come to you and tell you that they’re impressed with you and your courage in going out to fight monsters, as they can’t seem to find their starting point themselves. After explaining that no one else is willing to help them, you agree and soon find your first piece of important story-expanding context: Players have been overlooking and ignoring certain quests. Either because they don’t feel they give adequate rewards or that they’re tedious or monotonous fetch quests. I’ll get into why this detail is important in the review for the second Floor, but for now, get your butts ready, because after you finish helping out Tweedle Dick and Tweedle Dim, a familiar and unwelcome face arrives.
It’s Kibaou! The player with the highest-towering hate boner for Beta Testers in the entire game. Seeing as how it wouldn’t make sense to just blurt out your Beta Testers, you and your partner don’t bother mentioning it to Kibaou, which turns out to be a good thing.
He chastises and taunts the two players you’d just helped out for being cowards and offers you a spot in the group of players that are going to take down the first floor boss.
AFTER YOU DO SOME QUESTS FOR HIM, OF COURSE!
So after you deal with more shenanigans, which ended up helping the Nerd Duo for reasons, he tells you about the meeting that’ll be held about the boss and takes his leave. As your about ready to leave, you meet Sachi. (AKA, probably who people thought was Best Girl when S1 was the only Anime cour) She’s waiting on her friends to come back from a quest. She expressed her worries to you about having to fight monsters and endanger their lives, but, of course, you give her some…vaguely encouraging words. AND THEN YOU DO SOME- (Yeah, I think you’ve gotten the pattern by now)
Anyway, after saying goodbye to Sachi, practically setting up a friendship just waiting to be threatened with an unreasonably sharp fork to the eye, you head out and go to the next town, which is where the meeting’s being held.
(Sidenote: There’s another Beta Tester serving as an Info Broker named Argo. She’s kind of important too!)
Anyways, after meeting Diabel (Or Diavel as the game calls him, idk) for the first time and getting acquainted, he asks if you’ll be joining the raid, to which your partner expresses concern, as she reasonably should. Diabel obviously understands, but you two consider things and (They do give you a choice, though I’m not sure if it’s a cheap illusion of choice as I simply said Yes) decide to join in on the raid.
After helping prepare the budding raid group with MORE QUESTS, the meeting finally begins. Kirito is there, of course, but there’s literally no interaction with him until the raid happens, BUT THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT, KIBAOU’S GOT A LITTLE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT BEEETA TESTERSSSS!!!
He goes on his bigoted talk about how Beta Testers are the devil and blah, blah, blah, and then ALSO BEST CHARACTER AGIL COMES IN AND SHUTS HIM UP LIKE THE BOSS HE IS!!
After which, Diabel talks about the boss’s weapon-switching thing and then the rest of the meeting is skimmed through.
After the meeting and one more quest, Diabel asks your partner to go pass out equipment to the raid party so he could have a word with you. He then confesses to being a Beta Tester and that, after overhearing that you and your partner were Beta Testers as well from him overhearing your partner’s LOUD FUCKING MOUTH,(SERIOUSLY, HARUMI, YOU MAYBE WANNA ANNOUNCE OUR PRESENCE WITH AIR HORNS NEXT TIME?!) he asks you for confirmation.
The conversation turns to Diabel saying that the things Kibaou said about Beta Testers was true about him, that he turned his back on the other players after the revelation of “You Dead” in order to get stronger and ensure that he could take care of himself in this digital hellhole. He even expresses concern about facing responsibility for the fact if Kibaou were to ever find out.
The conversation soon takes a lighter turn when Diabel says he chose his name because he wanted to be more of a troublemaking kind of player and that, when he gets out of Aincrad, he’ll make good on that name in a safer, non-stabby game. (To which I told him I’m gonna be the one to stop him. It was a fairly nice moment.)
Afterwards, everyone is finally ready and you delve into the dungeon to fight monsters, kill a giant beast, and GET MONEY! After fighting the boss long enough to get his health low enough, the scene from the original story plays out as normal.
Illfang indeed changes weapons as the info suggested, but it’s an entirely different weapon and performs entirely different Sword Skills. Diabel gets utterly wrecked…
But then this is where the game makes good on it’s promise.
As everyone panics, seeing Diabel about to be dealt the finishing blow, you leap in and block the attack, saving Diabel from his original fate. After the aforementioned blunette recovers from this, the battle resumes and the boss is soon defeated. All is well.
EXCEPT the game didn’t really change all that much, as even though Diabel is still alive, Kibaou throws shade on Kirito for knowing what was happening with the boss and accusing him of both being a Beta Tester and putting Diabel in danger.
Before Diabel can even think to try and calm Kibaou down and possibly even come clean (Which I’m actually convinced he would’ve done after such a near-death experience), Kirito butts in with his long-winded fake as plastic speech about being “Better that all the other Beta Testers” and starting the incredibly stupid and generally pointless Beater plot point.
After Kirito leaves, Diabel says his goodbyes and that he’s relinquishing leadership over to Kibaou and a guy named Lind. After that, you and your partner cross over to the next floor, ending the first “Chapter” of our saga.
Overall Designs: Remember the towns of episode 1 and 2 of the anime and the fields and dungeon of said episodes? Yeah, that’s pretty much the entire first floor. Fair starting point for the game, I suppose. Enemies were…okay I guess.
Story Structure: It didn’t occur to me until I started writing this, but there was a fucking pattern to things. Meet a character, multiple quests, talk for a while, meet another character, more quests, more talking, etc. It didn’t feel quite as monotonous as it sounds, but still. I appreciate that they’re at least establishing certain things early on…I suppose. Oh, but I’m happy there are actual changes made from the addition of your character to the story, though not as many as I’d like… (*Cough* Beater Bullshit! *Cough*)
Still, fairly good start to the game, I suppose.
Overall Thoughts: This Floor was pretty good in terms of getting the player started and getting the story going, imperfect as it is.
