Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet Review: Phantasy Star Online meets Borderlands

I've never been particularly fond of the Sword Art Online series, but a friend recently gifted me a copy of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet for the PC and I figured I'd give it a go. If you're not familiar with the series, the anime follows Kirito and Asuna; a couple who go between various virtual reality MMO's and live/play within them. In Fatal Bullet, you create your own character, but various characters from the show are also within the games world.

Fatal Bullet takes place in Gun Gale Online, where guns are the focus instead of the commonly used swords and magic. There are multiple classes of guns; such as pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and even a plasma sword for close-range combat. If you've played the .hack games, you'll be familiar with the style of game as it's essentially an offline MMO, where NPC's take the role of real players.

Not only do you create your own character to play the game with, but you're also given a second character that you can create known as the ArFa-sys; a rare AI companion that helps you within the game. The ArFa-sys is also able to hold money to invest in a stock market-like system in-game, purchase rare weapons and gear and more. While you aren't able to switch between characters, your ArFa-sys follows you into battle, as well as other characters you come across in-game.

Although the game isn't actually an MMO, there are online aspects to the game, such as online co-op missions and a PVP mode. Co-op missions are sparse as it's determined by how far you are within the main game. This made it hard for me to play with friends, which was the main reason I was excited for the game. The PVP mode isn't your usual player versus player mode as instead of competing in skill against other players, your objective is to defeat an area boss faster than the other team.

As I mentioned, i'm not a fan of the show, so I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy the game as an outsider to the fandom, but it's actually been a very addicting experience. It's like a combination of Phantasy Star Online and Borderlands, where there's a lot of gear and grinding, but it doesn't feel overwhelming enough to make it a slog.