Hey everyone, welcome to my channel, it's me Gamerturk, hoping to get my schedule back
on track!
Im close, I promise...
Anyways, I have finally finished Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization DLC3, which is
the final DLC Chapter of the 3 episode long Abyss of the Shrine Maiden DLC content expanding
upon Tia's future and well..
Since it is a fairly expansive -not expensive-, expansive DLC, that pretty much offers more
actual content than the entire Accel World vs Sword Art Online, I thought "Hey, I should
give the entire DLC a fair review!".
For those of you playing Hollow Realization on PC, you already have the DLC included in
your purchase and if you want my opinions on the base Hollow Realization experience,
you can click on the icon on the upper right corner of your screen.
That out of the way, here is my Ultimate Review of Abyss of the Shrine Maiden DLC's for Sword
Art Online: Hollow Realization.
*DLC Intro with ending music instead of opening because Bamco always claims openings...*
Now before I start, I'd like to thank JapanCodeSupply for actually giving me a chance to give something
back to my viewers, they allow you to purchase Japanese Store codes for things like Playstation
Store, iTunes, Nintendo e-Shop and many others from wherever you are on the world.
So on the top of my mind, if you play on the Japanese servers of games like Sword Art Online:
Memory Defrag or Fate Grand Order on iOS, or if you want to get the Japanese versions
of a game like the upcoming Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet on Playstation so you can play
the game about a month earlier, you may wanna wait till the end of the video, I got something
for you.
But let's talk about Abyss of the Shrine Maiden.
The 3 part DLC for Hollow Realization costs you 24,99$ if you buy through the Season Pass
along with other little benefits or 29,27$ if you buy each of them individually for 9,99$,
but I'm not sure why you would wanna do that.
If you have watched my DLC1, Explorer of Illusory Mists video that I have done after clearing
it, which is linked on the small card icon on the upper right corner, I was not very
impressed.
I am not gonna repeat myself, but as a quick rundown, the story wasn't really worth it
due to the very obvious mystery and gameplay was a mess due to incredibly unbalanced bosses
in an attempt to fight against EX Dancing exploit, which was a stupid move, because
it only punished normal players who didn't use the exploit and pushed them to using it
as well.
I played DLC1 when it came out, so I am not entirely sure if the balance patches that
went into effect with DLC2 and 3 fixed this difficulty issue, but considering Fusion Skills
and better gear options, I'd say it probably did.
But before starting with DLC2, let me tell you what to expect from these DLC's in terms
of general additions and improvements.
First and probably the most important additions have been the Endgame weapon, armor and skill
grind that is Enigma Orders.
These are essentially certain sets of challenges that eventually unlock Paragon Weapons, Armor
and special skills and in DLC3, also certain Original Sword Skills, for example Mother's
Rosario for Yuuki, Asuna and Kirito or Thousand Sword Rain for Rain and Kirito.
yeah, all of them are available for Kirito as well, aside from their original owners.
Heroine Quests and Fusion Skills have been added as well that unlock a nice character
event expanding upon the personality of each Heroine character in the game with well done
character events and give you certain boosts when fighting.
Along with the DLC story, you also get Alice and Eugeo in DLC3 along with lenghty quests
for both characters, as well as Bed Scenes for other Characters as well.
Each DLC came with their own, special, brand new areas on various floors of Incomplete
Aincrad.
As I said, the DLC for Hollow Realization alone, which is 24,99$, offers more actual
and original content than the entirety of Accel World vs Sword Art Online does for the
60$ base game and 20$ content DLC combined.
DLC 2 came out after a very long wait, towards the end of July and took the DLC in a much
better way.
Now that we knew that the Masked NPC was Tia, Premiere's Doppelganger shaped in a different
way, we could actually focus on actual story progression.
We learn why Tia is running away and why her appearence is different.
And most importantly, what is causing her and Premiere to have certain problems.
Apparently, after the main story ended, Tia got in contact with a Singularity, caused
by the incomplete Aincrad, which made Cardinal simulate a future Tia, based on what personality
Tia had at that moment which is obviously not good news, considering at that point,
she was shaped by the villain of our game, Genesis.
After simulating a grim dark future for Tia, the system attempted to overwrite her simulated
future onto her, which she refused to accept.
And that is the story at its core.
Your Destiny is not set in stone.
You are the one who is in control of it.
Of course DLC2 takes its time making Tia accustomed to the gang.
As you know from the main campaign, she doesnt trust anyone and people chasing her in hopes
of taking her down and getting loot from her did not really help the issue, but she has
multiple breakthroughs in Tuner of Causality.
First of, the crew diverting the mob to another place to save her, then her and Kirito falling
down a valley and working together and at the end, everybody helping Tia make it through
the boss, despite her being against the idea at first.
But at the end of DLC2, you come to realise that she is still somewhat against the idea,
as she leaves early after taking care of the Tundra area and moves onto the final area
on her own in DLC3, the One Who Resists God.
DLC is properly balanced, unlike DLC1.
The improvements of Fusion Skills and their bonuses really help your journey as well,
so I strongly recommend not ignoring it.
The gear gets better as well and since the requirements for Enigma Orders have been adjusted
as well, I strongly recommend going for Paragon Weapons at this point in the game, if you
havent done so earlier.
The problem you will have in DLC2 is the slighly too vague hints that require backtracking
and some guesswork.
You have to collect certain medallions to progress, but the game is very vague about
their location in the first place.
Like, it would only say "Find the medallion towards the west of the starting teleporter"
and my god, there are more than 4-5 different available locations west of that teleporter.
The event doesnt even have a quest marker and this wouldnt be an issue if it told you
the exact map you would find the trinket.
But having to search for something blindly on a handful of maps, without knowing if you
are even on the right map or not is essentially soulcrushing.
Im fine with backtracking that this DLC requires you to do, Im all for reusing locations in
different ways to expand the adventure, but the unknown regarding the medals are not something
you really should deal with blindly.
I strongly recommend watching a playthrough, and speaking of a playhrough, you can just
watch them here on my channel, where I titled every video where I found a medal accordingly,
so searching for the medallion name should give you the episode you are looking for.
Overall though, aside from the medal searching, Episode 2 was much more enjoyable overall,
compared to DLC1, both in terms of its story and its gameplay being more balanced.
But back to the story with DL3, the One Who Resists/Opposes/Defies God, I am not exactly
sure what the name is considering we got a different name with every translation.
Anyways, Tia admits quite early on in DLC3 that she is willing to open up and willingly
accept the help Kirito and others have been offering for a while, after she gets herself
in a terrible situation at a terrible time.
When that happens, all that is remaining is to reach the Singularity that is causing these
issues for Tia and Premiere.
This DLC is more about exploration and having fun.
Since this was the last update the game was ever going to get, it was obvious that Aquria
wanted to make the game as fun as possible in its latest state and they certainly have
achieved their goal with this.
DLC3 has barely any backtracking, barely any puzzles, it just asks you to go to places
and do stuff.
You get introduced to Endless Dungeons, similar concept from Accel World vs SAO or credit
to where credit is due, once again back to Aquria and the "Tower" they had back in Sword
Art Online Hollow Fragment.
You enter 5 different Towers that are not very long for the sake of acting like a tutorial
and acting as a part of the story.
Once you are at the boss, well...
I am incredibly pleased and kind of disappointed at the same time, due to wanting an epic ending
revolving around the cast.
Let me explain, once you get to the final boss, you enter with your current party of
4 people and determine that the boss is too though for a single party to take care of
(despite I was sure I could do it, but lets gloss over that for the sake of the story,
since story takes priority).
And after you run away, you encounter a system announcement that there would be an emergency
maintanance and players would be logged out soon, so if the crew can't defeat the Singularity,
Tia and Premiere will likely be deleted due to the abnormality.
Everybody sends out requests for a final raid before the maintanance to other players.
Now, what I was hoping here was that nobody would show up, so the entire crew would get
together and face the final boss in an epic finale, featuring the entire cast.
You know that bosses are limited to 4 parties of 4 people.
So for example main Party would be Kirito, Asuna, Premiere and Tia, second party would
be Silica, Lizbeth, Leafa and Sinon, third party would be Agil, Klein Argo and Kizmel
and last party would be Rain, Seven, Philia and Strea.
But no, Aquria decided for the morally better choice of random people who were invited to
show up, to showcase one last time that humans can be trusted to finish off Tia's character
arc in a well thought out manner.
And the boss is well designed as well, he has incredibly thick armor, so you cant really
damage him, but certain actions at certain times puts strain on its armor and the armor
eventually breaks, staggering the boss and allowing you to deal huge amounts of damage.
Of course after beating the boss, we got one last challange.
The simulated future of Tia is the one last thing we need to defeat as Kirito and Tia
next to us, truly showcasing that Tia has, indeed, grown up throughout these adventures.
It was a really neat way of concluding a huge arc that started back in the Vanilla story.
And of course, after finishing the DLC3 story, you have tons of post game content.
Heroine quests providing you more character stories that are well written with care, compared
to only slapstick at the expense of characters, Bed Scenes that are more than just simple
fanservice if you actually pay attention to the dialogue instead of just the picture,
tons of Enigma Orders to grind for maximum power and Endless Dungeon to test your skills
and of course, Multiplayer where you can show off your achievements and stats to other people
is still there.
So long story short, If you enjoyed Hollow Realization, the DLC's are a must buy, unlike
the DLC for Accel World vs Sword Art Online where the DLC only feels like a cash grab
without any sort of care.
I strongly recommend these DLC's, even at regular price, to actually support the developers
who had passion for their project and truly managed to realize their ambitions in a way
that will please a majority of SAO fans in terms of story and many RPG fans in terms
of gameplay.
Again, if you want to hear my thoughts on the base game, you can click the icon on the
uper right corner to watch my Hollow Realization review, but remember, things you hear in this
review overwrites what I say in the vanilla review, since things have improved a lot with
every single DLC bringing tons of Quality of Life improvements and features.
And with that, it is time I go back to that surprise I was talking about at the beginning
of the video.
Let me start with full transparency here, since that is just my style.
I have been contacted by the people at JapanCodeSupply, a website that offers codes for various Japanese
online marketplaces such as the Japanese Playstation Store, iTunes, Nintendo e-Shop and many others
and if you are a fan of Japanese games, you know not every Japanese game comes over to
the western markets, or they just arrive at a delayed rate.
You can just create an account on the Japanese Stores of those marketplaces and get codes
from JapanCodeSupply for those stores to buy games from them.
So, for example, if you are playing on the Japanese servers of games like Memory Defrag
or Fate Grand Order on your iOS device or as I said, the upcoming Sword Art Online Fatal
Bullet that comes out about a month before in Japan compared to the worldwide release,
so if you want to get the Japanese version, JapanCodeSupply can help you with that.
They have offered me to generate a discount code for my audience and I thought it was
a great way to give back to you guys, especially as a channel that mainly focuses on Japan
based games.
So if you go over to japancodesupply.com -or you can click on the link in the description-
and use the promo code "GAMERTURK", all caps and you will get 3 Dollars off of your purchase
of 50$ or more.
The code has no expiry date, so if you are watching this from the future, the code should
still be available, but can only be used once on an account.
JapanCodeSupply is also running giveaway during December, handing out 5 iTunes gift cards
worth 5000 Yen each, which is around 45$ depending on the exchange rate.
You can find the giveaway link in the description, which is running until December 17th.
And again, for full transparency, this entire thing is just a way of giving something back
to you guys for supporting my channel over the years and I have no financial benefits
based on the usage of this code, it is purely for you.
So again, huge thanks to JapanCodeSupply for giving me this chance and huge thanks to you
guys for supporting my channel.
I still have more Ultimate Reviews, for example AWvsSAO review that I have the script ready
for but can't get myself to edit the video because I really feel heartbroken about the
game, and other content like "BS Forces Reviews" exposing lies and hypocrasies regarding many
mainstream Sonic Forces reviews that are blatantly not being fair about it.
But they have to wait a little, because I am currently in the middle of an exam period
at my university and can't focus on my channel 100%, so I hope you understand.
As always, you can find me on facebook.com/Gamerturk and @Gamerturk95 on twitter and you can also
join us on the Gamerturk Discord channel, invite link is down below in the description
as well.
Make sure to hit that like button if you enjoyed and if you have further questions, just ask
them in the comments and I'll be there to help.
You can always support my channel directly through Patreon.com/Gamerturk and a huge shout-out
to my current Patrons Nathan and Tiffany.
Make sure to subscribe for more and I'll see you guys in the next one.
Take care!
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