During the early 2000s, an anime called .hack//SIGN that revolved around an MMO, its characters, and the mystery of a girl stuck in a coma outside of the game world. It was enough of a hit to spawn two series of games on the PS2. In 2012, that idea was explored again in Sword Art Online with a similar premise of focusing on an online world and its effects on players in the real world. Its popularity spawned Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment for the PSP, which was later ported to the Vita and renamed Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment. Since a sequel is coming soon for the Vita and PS4, Bandai Namco decided to port that title once more to Sony's latest home console.

For those who follow the anime, the story takes place from an altered version of the series' 14th episode. The battle against Heathcliff on the 75th floor takes place but is a glitchy mess. By the end, it is unclear whether Heathcliff dies by Kirito's hand, but what is clear is that his body is gone and the game has not ended, leaving all of the players stuck and without a way to log out.

Instead, a door to the 76th floor opens up. After passing through it, all players are unable to teleport back to the lower floors, and the game has messed with their skills and corrupted the names of their equipment. With no other recourse, Kirito and his friends forge ahead to reach the game's supposed end at the 100th floor.

The game is squarely aimed at fans of the series. The opening sequence starts with a battle and then reacquaints you with the large cast of characters. There's no explanation for how these people met and their relationship to Kirito. It gives you a brief explanation of the main story, but considering that the characters are the driving force of the tale, the player needs to know why characters there are important in the first place. For everyone else, the tale can become quite confusing.

That is an important thing to note since the game floods you with dialogue at almost every step. The first 30 minutes, including the title sequence, consist almost entirely of cut scenes presented in a visual novel style with large 2-D character portraits. For the most part, the dialogue in the opening sequence isn't very important, so you can safely skip a good deal of it. Since almost everyone from the large cast of characters wants to say something at every opportunity, a lot of skipping has to be done. Fortunately, the translation has been cleaned up greatly from the Vita incarnation. Gone are the awkwardly translated phrases that dominated every scene, since every line was replaced with more straightforward translations.

Disregarding the numerous dialogue sequences, Re: Hollow Fragment starts off on the wrong foot due to some questionable design choices. The first is in  the character customization area. You're using Kirito as a base model, but anything from clothes to hairstyles can be changed to your liking. You can also change the sex, so running around with a gender-swapped Kirito is completely feasible. All of these things are promptly ignored in the cut scenes, which go for the default model and name, making the endeavor meaningless unless you're playing multiplayer since every change you make here is aesthetic rather than functional.

The second mistake is in the pacing of the tutorial pop-ups. The opening battle doles them out well enough but at the expense of combat flow. In town, the tutorials pop up so slowly that you'll discover what to do long before the game formally tells you about it. Going into the first real fight, the battle tutorials pop up once more, repeating the same information you've learned at the beginning. Though there are lots of things to learn in the game, it would've been nice to have it streamlined.

Get past this, and the game gives you a pretty good approximation of an MMO. You start in the hub town of Arc Sofia, which sports a decent size but is always packed with players roaming around and performing their own actions. There are a few shops in town that let you buy and sell items; you can also craft new ones and modify your weapons if you have the ore to do it. You'll initially have an exit to the rest of the floor, so you can explore its surroundings and fight, but you'll mostly use the teleporter to move around to new locations once you open up access to floor 77 and beyond.

The flow of combat for all 25 floors follows a pretty distinct pattern. Basically, you roam around the floor until you find the labyrinth. From there, you must fight until you find the location of the main floor boss. However, you can't attack the boss without the proper intel and manpower. Both can be obtained by completing missions specific to that floor, and once that's done, you can kill the boss and open up access to the next floor.

One thing hampers the enjoyment of combat: the missions, which break down into one of two categories. You're either on the hunt for a mini-boss or you're out on fetch quests to kill enemies or gather items. There's no variety, and since you have to complete all of the quests to get a chance to fight the boss, the affair can become quite a grind in a short amount of time.

If you're fine with that, you'll find that the combat is quite good. Though you can only go with one partner at a time, the fights play out in traditional MMO style, where you roam around the world, lock on to an enemy, and attack in a manner where you swing and can hit even if you aren't necessarily touching the foe. All of your attacks have cool-down timers, though the basic attack cools down at such a rapid rate that you can spam it. Face buttons handle swings, parries and dodging while the d-pad lets you send commands to your partner and praise them, which can lead to small bonuses during the fight. To replicate the myriad of moves usually available in these games, you can use the same buttons in conjunction with L1 or R1 to gain access to a set of more powerful techniques and commands.

It can be a complicated system, but start off at a pretty powerful level. You're at level 100 when you begin, and you already have some good equipment, lots of cash, and a good amount of moves to match your stats. Leveling might not be that fast, but starting off this strong means that early fights are very enjoyable. Though you can go through the whole game with the dual swords, you have the option to change your weapons, all of which have different skill paths to master. If anything, it makes up for the slower leveling, so the feeling of constantly getting stronger remains intact.

Normal battles are fine since they're quick, but the big battles against the floor boss make combat feel epic. Some may find it to be a pain, but having to worry about the well-being of a large number of your allies is the good kind of hectic experience. Everyone feels essential since they're actually doing damage, so you never come away feeling like you can sacrifice a few soldiers as cannon fodder so long as you get your hits in.

In case you're wondering, the game is quite lengthy. The 25 floors take a long time mostly because of the various quests involved to gain access to the boss. Counting the fight and the cut scenes for each floor, you can easily expect each floor to eat up about two to three hours if you don't skip things. Aside from the lengthy main campaign, the Hollow Fragment sections are equally as long and intriguing. This is a very lengthy game even for those not interested in getting a 100% completion rating, and you can easily spend enough time in the title to last you until the sequel is released.

One of the highlights of the MMO genre is being able to form up with real people to take on the game together. For a pseudo MMO, the emulation is well done considering your party limit is four. The lag is handled well, and the community is healthy enough, so teaming up with others won't be difficult. You aren't given the chance to go through the whole game with an all-human party, as online missions are restricted to certain areas. Still, the experience is fun enough, and everything you gain from playing online does carry over to your solo game.

Beyond the combat and other pseudo-MMO trappings, the game features dating mechanics for almost all of the supporting cast. The mechanics stick with the basics, so don't expect it to have the same depth as a dedicated dating sim. You can hold hands with the person or, if you're more daring, carry them around. You can also chat with them for a limited time, though your interactions are limited to hitting the button to agree whenever it appears. All of this dating has a purpose since it unlocks special armor that gives them huge buffs in one of four specific areas.

Since this is a port of the Vita game, it is nice that the title lets you import the save file as well. Considering the length of the game, fans would appreciate the gesture because it saves them from having to replay areas. However, it is more of a token gesture since there isn't anything new for those players to dive into. The redone translation is appreciated, but it can be argued that a new patch should've gone out to fix the issue for Vita owners. The online play is also nice, but since they're the same areas that were used in the Vita's ad-hoc multiplayer, which were also available in solo play, there's nothing new to experience there. With none of the content being exclusive to the platform, it's difficult to justify the double-dip in this case.

Since this is a PS4 port of a Vita game, one would expect the graphics to be much better on the more powerful hardware. To a small degree, they are. The game runs at a much higher frame rate when you're out fighting, but it drops tremendously when you're in town and it starts to get populated with other characters. The colors for the backdrops are vivid and look good, but there are still instances of blurry textures on most parts, and the effects aren't that spruced up over the original game. The characters have some nice animations, but the detail hasn't improved with the jump to newer hardware. Camera movement is pretty swift, but it can be a bit jerky when maneuvering through tight areas. It looks fine overall, but it is certainly closer in quality to a PS3 title than a PS4 one.

The sound remains unchanged from the Vita game, but it was good to begin with. The score fits perfectly, and the sound effects are solid, though there are a few times, such as during monster introductions, when no effects are heard at all. Voices are strictly in Japanese but performed well considering the original voice actors are all on board.

Sword Art Online - Re: Hollow Fragment is definitely for the fans, especially since it makes no real effort to ease newcomers into the world. At least it has a better translation for fans to enjoy, and the combat remains solid, especially around bosses. Nothing else was added to this version, but the game remains absolutely packed with content, and that's before you factor in online play, which has a decent community going for it. While outsiders may want to wait and see if the sequel serves as a better entry point, fans who skipped the Vita version will enjoy this iteration, despite the flaws.

Score: 6.0/10