Echoes of Aincrad Launches as Sword Art Online's First Custom-Protagonist RPG, Landing a 64 on Metacritic Amid Mixed Reviews
Bandai Namco's Echoes of Aincrad let players build their own Sword Art Online character for the first time, launching to a 64 Metascore and split critic reviews.
Overview
Echoes of Aincrad, an action role-playing game set in the Sword Art Online universe, launched July 9, 2026 in Japan on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with the Steam version and the rest of the world following on July 10, according to Anime News Network. The game was developed by Game Studio Inc. and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., according to the title’s official Bandai Namco product page, a credit independently confirmed by the game’s Steam store listing. Bandai Namco Entertainment America describes the release as a departure for the franchise, which has “always put players in the role of established characters,” with the new game instead letting players “enter a virtual world to experience a life-or-death adventure themselves,” the publisher said.
What We Know
The game drops a player-created protagonist into the floating castle of Aincrad as one of the “10,000 players trapped in the MMO-turned-death game,” exploring the world alongside established franchise characters including Kirito and Asuna, according to Anime News Network. Combat centers on “dodging, parrying and timing their actions perfectly to gain advantage,” alongside a “switch mode, which allows their ally to step up and cover for the player” during fights, Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe said in its launch announcement.
The game also includes a Death Game Mode, described as “a mode where the game deletes your save on character death, and is normally available only after beating the game for the first time,” Anime News Network reported, though the same report noted that the Deluxe Edition grants early access to the mode without requiring a full playthrough first.
Critical reception has been split. As of launch, Echoes of Aincrad held a Metascore of 64 based on 31 critic reviews on its PlayStation 5 page, according to Metacritic, with a user score still listed as “tbd” pending more ratings. Individual outlet scores varied widely: Siliconera gave the game 6/10, writing that “the plot of Echoes of Aincrad relishes in postponing all important developments with unexpected diversions” and that “characters sometimes disappear for 30 to 40 hours, padding out a plot that could have been interesting otherwise.” DualShockers scored the game 6.5/10, praising the combat — “the combat hits all the right notes, since I really had fun taking down all the bosses whilst constantly bringing along different party members” — while calling it “easily the most enjoyable Sword Art Online game,” but adding that “those highs are constantly held back by repetitive quest design, dull exploration, and a role-playing potential that never quite lives up to its ambitious premise.”
RPGFan was harsher, scoring the game 52/100 and writing that “from the moment it begins, it is already circling the drain, repeating itself until there is nothing left.” The outlet also flagged the Death Game premise as underused, noting “it is also disappointing how little the Death Game premise actually matters,” and criticized enemy variety with the line “a boar. A wolf. Another boar with slightly higher stats.”
What We Don’t Know
Bandai Namco has not disclosed sales figures for the launch. Metacritic’s user score for the game remained unavailable at time of writing, listed as pending additional ratings. It is also unclear how review scores compare across the game’s other platforms, since the Metascore cited above reflects Metacritic’s PlayStation 5 aggregation specifically rather than a combined figure across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Analysis
The reviews so far describe a game caught between two audiences. Outlets broadly agree that letting players build their own character to explore Aincrad — rather than simply reliving Kirito’s story — is a meaningful structural change for a franchise that has repeatedly adapted the same narrative beats across prior games. But that novelty is paired with recurring complaints about pacing, repetitive quest structure, and an underused Death Game premise, the mechanic most tied to the source material’s central stakes. The spread between DualShockers’ comparatively positive 6.5/10 and RPGFan’s 52/100 suggests critics are weighing the premise’s novelty against its execution very differently, a gap that is likely to shape how the game is remembered within the franchise’s catalog.