Bandai Namco has a pretty good track record of bringing the Sword Art Online video games to the West, and following Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet coming to consoles, fans in the West will be able to enjoy a new mobile game.
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Sword Art Online: Integral Factor is a free-to-play mobile RPG for iOS and Android with extra payable items. English language players can now pre-register (which you can follow here), and will receive special bonuses when the game launches.
Sword Art Online: Integral Factor launched November 30 in Japan and takes place during the Aincrad arc of the original series. The players must create an avatar and work with their virtual partner Koharu (who’s voiced by Ari Ozawa in the Japanese version) to clear the 100 floors in Aincrad.
For those unfamiliar with Sword Art Online, the series was originally created by Reki Kawahara with illustrations provided by abec. The series follows a boy named Kirito after he and thousands of gamers get trapped in a virtual reality video game known as Sword Art Online. The gamers must band together to defeat the game’s final level to escape, but Kirito and his guild learn there is more behind their prison than they were originally told.
Its first season aired in 2012 and ran for 25 episodes, while its second season, Sword Art Online II, aired in 2014 and ran for 24 episodes. The series currently gearing up for its next big arc in the light novel series, “Unitial Ring,” and the next season of the anime is set to adapt “Alicization.”
The Alicization arc covers Volumes 9-18 of Kawahara’s light novel series. In this arc, Kirito is offered a job with Rath. He’s asked to work for the firm in order to test a new type of FullDive equipment known as the Soul Translator. But Rath had no plans to make a new FullDive gaming console. Instead, the firm is working to make a new military AI.
Bringing Kirito in to act as a human influence on AI, he finds that Rath had already trapped a child’s soul in the machinery. When Kirito was brought out of the machine, Rath blocked his memories of his time in Underworld, but Kirito learns there are many who want him to keep quiet about his time with the AI, a child named Alice.
