Sword Art Online: Last Recollection

Sword Art Online: Last Recollection was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!

When I was younger, I had fallen in love with Naruto. That and One Piece were my two favorite anime and really the only ones I watched. When I got older and realized my love of gaming, I came across Sword Art Online. I loved the idea behind it and quickly started to enjoy the MMO emphasis and story behind it. Seeing games released with that IP, I was excited to see the emphasis on progression systems and MMO-like gameplay in an offline game. Sword Art Online: Last Recollection is the next game in the series, and I was extremely excited to dive in.

Like the other recent games in the series, Sword Art Online: Last Recollection will have you run around and complete story and side quests while partaking in real-time combat. You will fight enemies with 3 other teammates or in co-op multiplayer and utilize a mix of regular attacks, skills, and perfectly timed dodges.

The combat can feel a bit mindless since it is a lot of mashing and using different skills, but I love how flashy it is and still really enjoyed going back and forth to rank up, get money to buy new equipment, and receive skill points. The skill tree is a little disappointing, and I wish there were more options other than enhanced skills and some passive ones, but there's a solid amount of variety because of the different weapon choices.

I also found the story to be quite engaging and enjoyable, while it was also super nice to see most of the original characters from past games. The game was also simplified from the last one, so while it is more accessible, there are some missing features from older games, like the weapon proficiency system. There are some tanky boss fights too, which can make some fights feel dragged out. I still had a lot of fun playing, however, and it runs really well on the Steam Deck.

Sword Art Online: Last Recollection - Steam Deck Performance

For the most part, Sword Art Online: Last Recollection runs extremely well on the Steam Deck, but it does perform weirdly in certain situations. The biggest one I discovered is trying to play at 60 FPS. In my experience, playing at 60 FPS was a little unstable. It drained a lot of battery, but having a capped lower framerate, even just 55 FPS, saved a significant amount of battery and made it much more stable:

Luckily, 55 FPS still feels as smooth as butter and allows us to push other settings or save battery much more easily!

Recommended Settings

I love how the game feels at higher framerates, so my recommended settings are going to keep framerate up as much as possible. At 55 FPS, with low graphical settings, the majority of the game can easily hit the framerate without any issue. When running around and fighting, the battery drain usually sticks around 12W - 13W, though in some cities, I did see the framerate drop a little, and the battery drain went up, but since this was in the city, I felt making sure the battery was saved was a priority:

Quality Settings

Then, I went off to see how hard I could push the visuals. The highest quality settings are a bit too hard for the Steam Deck, but with a mix of "High" graphics and shadow quality, along with "Medium" Anti-Aliasing, we can keep a solid 45 FPS that holds in the harder fights.

Accessibility

As for accessibility, there are toggles for different effects and UI elements, controller vibration, which arts/skills are prioritized, and how the sub-menus are controlled during battle. There are also different options for the map display, as well as party commands. You can change different sound bars, camera settings, font size, message speed, and even if the game remembers where your cursor last was in certain menus.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions, so there are no black bars, and it has controller and cloud save support.

Conclusion

Sword Art Online: Last Recollection is an enjoyable action RPG that emulates parts of an MMO in its gameplay systems. It is a bit simplified from previous games, which means some features like the weapon proficiency system are gone, but it is still a lot of fun to play, especially if you are a fan of the series! It also runs really well on the Steam Deck without needing many compromises, something I always love to see.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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