If you’ve ever come across the adventures of Kirito and Asuna from Sword Art Online, you might have thought “the world of SAO truly deserves a game adaptation”.
And so, it got a bunch of them but… none of them hit as they should. Those games told us stories that we knew from anime and didn’t fulfil the dreams about real journeys across Aincrad.
Has it changed now thanks to the new entry titled Echoes of Aincrad? Or have we just got another “SAO bait game”?
Echoes of Aincrad
Release Date: July 10, 2026
Genres: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
Table of Contents
Starting in Beta
One of the coolest things in EoA is the fact that we start before the events that took place in the first season of Sword Art Online. We are one of the first 1000 beta testers, who get to experience the game before official release.
Why does it matter? Because in almost every conversation between characters you can see this hype building up about the upcoming release. Even one of side-buddies says that he joined our party to learn how to play in group, so when SAO releases, he can help his brother catch up.
And if you watched the anime, you got that building feeling of “god, they don’t know what they’re getting into”.
But if you’re not familiar with the plot of Sword Art Online – when game finally released players got trapped in Aincrad and couldn’t log out. They also learned that death in game also meant death in real life. The only way to escape was to beat the game and that meant exploring all 100 floors of Aincrad.
I just really hope that in the full release we’re going to experience that chaos, fear and the feeling of being trapped spread across all NPCs.
Slow Action Online
Our journey begins during a raid to acquire the relic – your typical dungeon ride.
This is where we’re getting a usual tutorial section but with an amazing twist.
When we meet one of our party members he explains system to us in such a believable way. Characters are talking about loot, gear upgrades, combos, special moves or even call you a newbie.
And the fact it fits so well in game makes the experience incredibly real. There’s no reason to cringe when they talk to each other’s, it just feels like you’re sitting on Discord with your friends and listen to them explaining the systems or giving you tips how to be better.
Echoes of Aincrad nailed the feeling of meeting other gamers and how they would interact. The conversations don’t feel scripted and characters discuss builds, loot and mechanics the same way real MMO players do.
But for love of the god, how long and boring the start of the game is… and it could be a big turn off for many people.
First section is a mix of running, fighting 2-3 monsters that die from one heavy attack, gathering resources, and repeating the cycle. It takes almost 40 minutes to complete this route, and it gets boring so fast.
I wish that for full release, Bandai Namco would shorten prologue by 60-70%. It kills the curiosity and replaces it with endless corridors.
We’re Out in The Wilds!
Everything changes when we finally get to embark on our first quest.
There’s party selection, but in the demo, you can only choose one character. We read the quest details (what or who is our target, which resources we need to obtain or where we need to head) and bam, welcome to the semi-open area of Aincrad.
And let me tell you – this game is gorgeous. While watching the first trailers I thought it looks like every UE game, without anything new to offer. I’m so happy that I was wrong.
Seeing the first wandering wild boars or wolves made me realize that Echoes of Aincrad is the game I’ve been waiting for since 2013. It hits that “SAO feeling” that no other game could hit. Everything just fallen into right place, music, graphic design, monsters and the world itself.
It’s incredible how well EoA scratches that “now I’m going to be a beater” fantasy that the anime built inside me.
Of course, EoA is not as open as Elden Ring, for example.
The areas are limited and often has only one route leading to main goal. It often leads to backtracking or frustration that the route we thought would be right one ends with the dead end.
I also wish there would be more movement options like climbing, grappling hook (which makes every game much better just by implementing that mechanic) or riding mounts to travel a bit faster.
I love that bosses or “elite” enemies drop so many items when defeated. Speaking as a fan of the Borderlands series, there’s never enough loot.
The basic versions of foes also provide certain items – especially ones to craft or upgrade our weapons. And that leads us to…
Upgrades, Weapons and Synthesis
We quickly learn that the starting gear that we obtained from joining the beta is “a bait” and crafted armour is much better than that noob set we rock.
Crafting is simple: choose a gear we want, give materials to the Smithy and voilà! Same goes with weapons but it gets interesting when we look deeper at them.
Oh, and disclaimer. If you dreamed of being a mage or archer – too bad, game informs us really fast that there’re no such things, only melee weapons are available.
Going back to weapons, they can get up to 5 bonuses such as:
- Bonus ATK
- Bonus Stamina
- More damage from skills
- Additional HP
- Damage reduction
- and many, many more.
This system leads us to Synthesis, which creates an opportunity to make the ultimate gear. It’s simple – if we have, for example, a Sword with upgrades like ATK, Stamina and Additional HP, and another sword has only the ATK bonus, we can merge them into one item inheriting the ATK bonus from the weaker one which is added to existing bonus. So if you’ve got weapon with +15 ATK and merge it with +10 ATK, the upgraded weapon grants total of +25 ATK.
It creates a much deeper system than only upgrading and creating stronger gear. Customisation like that very often leads to situations where almost every item can be tuned into OP weapon.
Story in Echoes of Aincrad
In the demo we only get to experience the prologue, which lasts about 3 hours. The story itself isn’t so complicated, just the tales of beta players and some scum farming content by killing other people in the game.
Only one time do we hear about Kirito, who’s known as one of the best players in SAO. It might be only a fan service, or a very gentle foreshadowing that we might fight alongside him later.
This Might be It
Even after getting a bit bored in tutorial section, the feeling of “man I want to see more” kept coming back to me.
Echoes of Aincrad really nailed the fantasy of an SAO game I always wanted to experience (not the one with nervegear and certain death).
I’m pleasantly surprised how well the game runs, knowing that Bandai had really big issues with Code Vein II when it launched.
For every SAO fan who dreamed of exploring Aincrad or just someone that likes good single player RPGs – Echoes of Aincrad might be a big surprise.
So don’t wait and just grab that demo and log in… but be careful, you might not be able to log out.