Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet's fourth DLC, titled Dissonance of the Nexus in the West,
aka Diva of the Snow Fields in Japan has come out just over a week ago, bringing some more
fan favorite characters from the series into the Game, Sachi, YUNA, Eiji and Seven.
But how does the DLC compare to the previous 3 DLC Chapters?
Welcome everyone, I'm Gamerturk and this is my Ultimate Review for Fatal Bullet DLC4,
Dissonance of the Nexus!
As usual, like my Alicization Explained series and my recent playthroughs, you can find Timestamps
in the description and the pinned comment to navigate freely through this review and
skip certain bits if they do not interest you.
The description and pinned comment also feature my ongoing Giveaway that you can join, as
well as Amazon and Book Depository affiliate links if you are interested in any kind of
SAO material and want to support my channel at the same time!
But with that out of the way, let's start with Dissonance of the Nexus.
There are 3 aspects that I feel are important.
Story, Content and Characterization, 2 of which the base game failed at and all 3 that
the 3 DLC Chapters failed at.
So, let's begin with the story that takes place after the main games True Ending and
while there is not much to spoil here, you can still choose to skip ahead if you want
to experience the DLC story yourself.
The DLC was heavily advertised as "2 parallel storylines" and well...
To a certain extent that is true.
We have one storyline that involves Kirito and the main cast, following some rumors about
Ghosts in a new area, coming across Eiji from Ordinal Scale looking for "someone", which
we all know is YUNA but can't be explicitly told so, because otherwise the plot just doesn't
work due to a reason I'll mention in a bit, and eventually finding a copy of Sachi, somehow,
and we have to save her before she is consumed by an expanding Black Box in her consciousness.
The second "parallel" storyline follows the Alternative Gun Gale Online cast, which you
should totally watch the anime of if you haven't done so already, also being joined by the
GGO newcomer Seven and eventually crossing paths with the Diva YUNA from Ordinal Scale,
that we never tell Eiji about because nobody bothers to mention it during the actual main
story of the DLC to avoid what could have become a neat struggle between the cast members.
And while the stories are running "Parallel", they are...
Not really that...
I was hoping for a more free-form approach when they advertised "2 Parallel Storylines",
but instead, the story just feels like your usual linear story, it's just that the game
forces you to tend to Kirito and Co for 10 minutes and then sends you off to AGGO for
the next 10 minutes.
It certainly is more of a sequential linear story of all things, than actually being parallel
which makes the interconnected parts of both stories to be a little forced if I am to be
honest.
Doing a quest with AGGO cast breaking a barrier that Kirito is facing, us spending a lot of
time with YUNA, yet never letting Eiji know because he couldn't be bothered to mention
who he had been searching as if it was some mystery...
But while there are easy nitpicks to be made in this DLC, compared to the base game story
and the DLC's, Dissonance of the Nexus is miles ahead in terms of providing an entertaining
story with a proper conclusion and thanks to that, it allows the player to just enjoy
the story by overlooking these small nitpicks.
And that has 2 reasons.
1) The story actually has a proper establishment.
Although the roots of the story does not generate from the efforts of the Fatal Bullet writers,
the existence of Ordinal Scale provides a decent enough tension between Kirito and Eiji,
as well as certain bits and pieces of development to them, which was extremely refreshing to
see.
And that tension and development exists, because the game, on numerous occassions, confirms
that the events of Ordinal Scale have already happened in the Gameverse, thus giving us
an established personality for Eiji, rather than just blatantly introduce them without
any information, as was the case with the previous DLC Characters, including Clarence
and Shirley in DLC2 that had at least 1 episode dedicated to them in the Anime, but seemingly
pulled out of nowhere so the audience did not have any material to relate to their current
personalities or partnership.
Eiji on the other hand, had the benefit of the entire Ordinal Scale, as well as the prologue
to OS, Hopeful Chant and the epilogue to OS, Cordial Chords.
I'll also include a link for these beautiful sidestories expanding greatly upon Eiji and
Yuuna's past and their future respectively that you can read for free, but speaking of
these, the underlying plot, explored in the True Ending of the DLC4 also works, because
instead of re-inventing the wheel in an unimaginitive way, they simply took the basis of Cordial
Chords and used it to tell a compelling story and conclusion to Eiji and YUNA, which I'm
certain would never be in any animated medium for fans to enjoy, especially for the western
audience since it was never officially translated.
The second reason for the enjoyable story experience is that the characters, for the
first time since the base game, actually feel like characters, instead of soulless exposition
machines!
Even in the base game sidestories, barely could you care for the characters, exasperated
by the fact that they would be speaking to the mute OC most of the time as exposition
tools.
In DLC4, they are actually interacting with each other, with their usual, human-like personalities,
struggles, emotions, fears, pasts and your OC is just on a trip with these enjoyable
characters.
We don't need boring exposition as to who these characters are, we already had 4 games
prior to these, we had 2 Seasons and a Movie of an Anime, with the third season currently
airing, we know these characters and we need them to act like themselves rather than being
a shell of themselves and that is what this DLC achieves.
As mentioned earlier, Kirito and Eiji's past together is used neatly, as Kirito understands
where Eiji was coming from, since he was in the very same situation when he had lost Sachi.
We see Kirito's past regrets being re-ignited, as Sachi returns for the second time just
to die and then be re-animated, which is a huge issue on its own, but instead of going
off on a tangent, I'm just gonna direct you to my Bloated Gameverse Cast video, click
the icon on the top right corner if you are interested, and it does a great job at normalizing
Eiji and his actions as well.
On the other hand, the AGGO Cast, having incredibly boring character events with the free day
1 DLC, finally are back to their usual cheerful and colored personalities that we know from
the main canon that are just outrightly incredibly to follow and listen to.
But to recap, especially for those who skipped this bit due to spoilers, the Story of DLC4
is much more enjoyable than the stories of previous DLC's and the main game by having
a concrete, concise and complete story, with accurate and enjoyable portrayals of these
characters for once, while also bringing a beautiful story from the not-even-officially
translated Cordial Chords to your screens, that I still strongly recommend that you read
via the free Fan Translation by Gsimenas that you can find in the description.
Sure, the true ending ends on yet another cliffhanger, even after we had one Alicization
cliffhanger at the end of DLC3, but I did not mind it all that much, since the DLC already
offered a complete story on its own, rather than Itsuki running away in the base game,
and the already short story of Lievre being butchered into 3 episodes that it didn't have
content to fill.
Considering I have covered the story and the characterization in this first bit, the only
question you probably have right now is...
Well...
"I cleared the previous DLC's in 30 minutes, is this DLC so short as well?"
Yes, the actual gameplay content itself.
Now let me be straight with you, the content is nothing mindblowing, it doesn't come with
a huge variety of things to do like Hollow Realization.
But it is much better than the previous 3 DLC's.
It more or less takes around the same time as the 3 DLC's combined if you really are
moving with a fast pace, but this can be justified that the DLC is already cheaper than the Season
Pass featuring the 3 DLC's.
As expected from the game type it is, much like Destiny, yeah, we got re-used enemies
and only the campaign bosses are Original, but knowing the audiences of these games and
being an avid Destiny player myself, I know this is rarely an issue.
On top of it, the White Frontier feels really fresh, instead of the distopian city structures
that we saw everywhere in Fatal Bullet so far and while a minor praise, the Dungeons
actually have a slightly different look as well, rather than being the very same boring
dungeon that we have played since day 1, they have this lovely, glass-like feel to it, fitting
the ice-theme of the DLC.
Also, the dungeons are fairly lengthy, but still are quite linear that you never get
lost, despite the fact that you may have no idea where you are if you open the map, so
it never actually feels frustrating.
We got gorgeously animated cutscenes that makes me wish we actually received more cutscenes,
but isn't that the same sentiment I share after every single SAO Game...
If you havent enjoyed the needless padding like finding random chests to progress through
the story, good news for you as those stuff are exclusively to be done by collectors post-game
now.
Your story progression is not locked by mindless padding, just go through the dungeons, shoot
bosses, have fun and you'll be progressing.
But as I said, there is a bunch of post-game collectables that you can chase if you wanna
sink your teeth in and I'm really glad they went this way, which I believe is the best
of both worlds.
Give the casuals who just want to enjoy the story a hasslefree path to do so, and provide
the hardcore audience things to chase after they are done!
But that is pretty much all I have to say about this DLC!
It's easy to nitpick, but by providing a well established and complete story, supported
by characters with enjoyable personalities, Fatal Bullet finally delivers something.
A coherent and compelling story that you can have fun following without being bored!
Now, since I know there is going to be people asking things like "Where do I get the Wizard
Costume, Eiji's Sword, Braveheart M costume", I am going to direct you to my Discord server.
The invitation link is in the description and we got plenty of collectors there that
can help you with whatever you are searching for.
I'm a completionist, not a Collector, so I do not specifically care for where I can find
the School Uniform outfit that I know I am never going to use, but some lovely people
in the community do, so come, join the server and ask them instead.
I hope this review of the 4th DLC for Sword Art Online Fatal Bullet was helpful for you,
if it was, please do like the video and subscribe for more!
If you have specific questions about the DLC, do ask them in the comments and I'll be glad
to answer them.
Otherwise, I'll see you back in my Alicization Explained series!
Thanks for watching, a huge thanks to my Patrons as always and I'll see you next time!
Stay Cool~
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