Rating
Echoes of Aincrad
Step into the legendary floating castle of Aincrad, a realm of breathtaking beauty and unforgiving danger. What seemed to be a dream adventure has now become a fight for survival. Among thousands of trapped souls, your journey is yours alone; will you rise, endure, and forge bonds that define your destiny? Or will you perish while facing enemies st...
Details
- Released
- July 9, 2026
- Developer
- Game Studio Inc.
- Genres
- Action · Role-playing (RPG) · Adventure
- Platforms
- PC · PS5 · Xbox Series X|S
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Echoes of Aincrad Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
Echoes of Aincrad gives SAO fans a fresh story, strong weapon customization, and solid performance, but limited exploration and repetitive combat hold it back.
Echoes of Aincrad: Sword Art Online is the latest installment in Bandai Namco's long line of games based on the light novel and anime series. This time, the
Review: Echoes of Aincrad isn't likely to wow anyone, but it offers a fun single-player action RPG experience for those with patience.
With Echoes of Aincrad, Bandai Namco tries to once again dive into the world of Sword Art Online, now from a perspective of different players.
Echoes of Aincrad faithfully recreates the Sword Art Online universe and offers a functional combat system with extensive equipment optimization possibilities. Its smooth performance—using Unreal Engine 5—and the polished aesthetic of its main environments demonstrate a significant improvement in production compared to previous installments in the franchise. However, this new SAO is hampered by a monotonous quest design, an exploration system restricted by invisible barriers, and a heavy reuse of enemies and bosses. So unless you…
Does distinguishing itself away from the Sword Art Online branding work out in the end for Echoes of Aincrad?
Echoes’ promise of chasing your own path through Castle Aincrad is undermined by sluggish pace, repetitive design, and shallow player agency.
Echoes of Aincrad needed more time to live up to its own concept.
A fresh perspective on the Aincrad arc and satisfying combat can't overcome Echoes of Aincrad's repetitive gameplay loop and archaic RPG systems.
It’s just that we’re in the middle of a flood of high-quality JRPGs, from indie through to the big blockbusters, and Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad does limit itself in a way that doesn’t do it any favours. The creative and narrative vision is bold and respectable, but offering a poor aping of what many would consider to be the finest game ever made in service of that creative vision was an ill-advised move.
Echoes of Aincrad promises to let you create your own adventure within the setting of Sword Art Online, but it doesn't let you off the leash.
Excellent PC performance and a soundtrack that occasionally reaches cinematic heights show that there was genuine potential here, but questionable design choices, technical inconsistencies, and an almost complete lack of immersion ultimately drag the experience down.