My Dream RPG Is Launching In July, But There’s a Problem

The older I get, the less excited I am about video games. Where once I was able to become immensely hyped over the most trivial of reveals, nowadays a new game announcement needs to fit all of my exceptionally niche interests and desires for it to generate a mere modicum of hype from me. It is, naturally, quite a sorry state of affairs, but nevertheless one that has its benefits. Sure, I wish I could be as excited about games and gaming news as I once was, but the elation I feel when a game really does tickle my fancy is rather exquisite. While it may be a little harder to come by, that emotion is worth far more to me now than being hyped about games in my youth ever was.

I preface this article with this rather sorrowful preamble because an announcement recently made me so gleefully excited I felt transported to the blissfully ignorant beauty of my childhood. The game was Echoes of Aincrad, a game potentially capable of rivalling the best JRPGs of 2026 that is based on the somewhat controversial anime, Sword Art Online. It not only looks exceptional, but it is offering an experience I had only ever dreamed would become a reality. Unfortunately, there is one aspect that is holding me back from giving in to the all-consuming hype: a crucial feature that is frustratingly missing.

Echoes Of Aincrad Is My Dream RPG

One cold, rainy afternoon, on a surprisingly relaxed amble back home from school, a friend and I dreamed up an utterly impractical Minecraft map that recreated the 100 floors of the iconic MMO featured in Sword Art Online. Our imaginations ran wild as we desperately thought of ways to experience the nightmarishly deadly game for ourselves. We promised to make the Minecraft map a reality before parting ways, although, perhaps a little unsurprisingly, it never happened. Instead, I have spent the following nearly 13 years attempting to find an experience that delivers the epic scope of SAO’s iconic first arc MMO, and, unfortunately, have largely failed.

Of course, fans of the anime will point out that there are already several games that attempt to offer such an experience, and, to them, I shall say, I hate Kirito. For those not in the know, Kirito is the all-powerful and effortlessly cool protagonist who spends more time having every grossly underdeveloped female character he meets throw themselves at him than he does doing anything remotely cool in the MMO. Every Sword Art Online game more or less makes you play as Kirito or an insert for him, something that I find endlessly grating and annoying, as it means you spend most of the game dealing with the aforementioned gaggle of girls falling head over heels for you. It is a shame, as a self-contained narrative set within Aincrad featuring an all-new cast of characters dealing with the problems Kirito faced, minus all the tropey anime nonsense, would be great.

Luckily, in steps Echoes of Aincrad, a game apparently so self-conscious of its connections to SAO that it largely drops the moniker from its title. It is the game my friend and I dreamed of making ourselves, the solution to the bafflingly boring Kirito problem, and, frankly, the game of my dreams. I was so unashamedly ecstatic when I discovered that not only was this game set within easily the best arc of SAO, but it was also dropping its central cast for the most part, that I found myself eagerly figuring out how to pre-order it, despite a relative lack of gameplay.

Bizarrely, I have no real affection for SAO beyond its first arc in Aincrad itself. However, those initial 14 episodes, the endless heartbreak of episode 3, the gorgeously realized MMO with its unique UI, the perfect execution of the concept of dying in the game causing one to die in real life, had such an effect on me that I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Every time a new SAO game is released, or any time I get a pang of nostalgia for the first time I watched all 14 episodes in one night, I feel myself drawn straight back in. Echoes of Aincrad means so much to me as a result, a game that truly allows me to live the frankly bizarre fantasy that SAO offers. Unfortunately, it is missing that aforementioned crucial feature that would truly make it the game I have always dreamed of.

Echoes Of Aincrad Lacks The MMO Elements From SAO

Echoes of Aincrad is a single-player JRPG, and that is great. I in no way want it to be a true MMO akin to the one seen in Sword Art Online, as I have a general aversion to the genre owing to extreme anxiety and a propensity to play alone. However, what Echoes of Aincrad should do is mimic the feeling of an MMO as it is, after all, narratively set within one. Unfortunately, after having watched as much gameplay as is currently available, I noticed a frustrating lack of MMO-esque features that were present in previous games.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (one of those aforementioned Kirito simulators), for all its many, many faults, did an incredible job of replicating the offline MMO experience that no other game has managed to achieve. When you embarked on adventures outside of the main hub area, you’d encounter other groups of players running around fighting monsters, each with their own levels, gear, and abilities. Those same characters would appear in the hub area talking to one another, running between shops, and heading out on missions. It was a fairly robust simulation of the MMO experience, one that felt alive, even if, at all times, it was clear these weren’t real people.

Echoes of Aincrad has seemingly abandoned this feature in lieu of a single companion that fights alongside you in battle and a bunch of background NPCs in the Town of Beginnings repeating basic animations. It not only robs the experience of an atmosphere utterly unique to it, for there are few video games actually set within video games, but it severely lessens the believability that one is in an MMO. That level of simulation found in Hollow Realization made its world feel so stuffed with life and an infinitely more immersive experience as a result. Echoes of Aincrad, on the other hand, looks a tad lifeless, its world merely teeming with faceless NPCs wandering around aimlessly.

Ironically, Hollow Realization did a better job of eschewing the feeling of being the protagonist in this MMO, even though you were ostensibly playing as the most self-important character in all of anime history. Of course, Echoes of Aincrad still has the potential to be one of the best JRPGs ever made, even without the dedication to the MMO aesthetic, and its move away from the plotlines and characters of SAO is a huge step in the right direction. I just can’t help but feel a little disappointed that the two couldn’t be combined to make Echoes of Aincrad the greatest non-MMO MMORPG in existence. Still, I think about how my younger self would have been over the moon to have gotten anything even remotely akin to Echoes of Aincrad, and I can’t help but feel at least a little happy to know the part of his spark that remains within me is blazing brightly with enthusiasm.

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