Animation · blog · Manga · Proxymité Japon ·

Alfheim Online - Sword Art Online

ALfheim Online (アルヴヘイム・オンラインaruvuheimu in the rain ) is a virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game (VRMMORPG) in the Sword Art Online series released a year after SAO had been defeated. Compatible with all FullDive systems and allowed player characters to be transferred from SAO None

The game features nine races of fairies who can fly for a limited time and use magic, and who must complete the grand quest of reaching the floating castle at the top of the World Tree. There, players were supposed to meet Oberon, the fairy king, who would transform the race that first completed the grand quest into a "true" race of alfs who could fly indefinitely.

After the discovery of a sinister plot by the game's owners, ALO was acquired by Ymir , and surface flight became unlimited for all races. One of the patches also introduced SAO Sword Skills, with some necessary modifications.

Background

SAO's parent company, Argus, went bankrupt after the SAO incident, and the servers with all the data and game rights were acquired by RCT Progress Inc., which spent a year making SO. The world of ALO combines Celtic legends and Norse mythology, and its cardinal system continues to attract more legends with its quest creation feature.

System

When first connected with the "Link Start" command, the hardware calibrates itself and then the game starts.

ALO got rid of the leveling system and is purely skill-based, with everyone's maximum hit points remaining more or less the same and skills improving through repeated use.

The novel Flight System , the first of the FullDive games, offers players natural flight using the fairy wings and an emulated one-handed controller as a backup until they learn to fly without them.

Virtual reality experience

The ALO Immersion Engine provides the same level of realism as SAO. Players can experience the world with their five senses to a large extent, the visuals are fluid, and the biomes and weather systems are varied and meticulously detailed.

The differences from real life are mostly the same as in SAO : no pain from attacks thanks to the default zero pain absorption setting, no blood or gore, which are replaced by bright orange digital effects, players become tired in the game without reference to their real bodies, and in-game food satisfies virtual hunger. Zero durability is represented by objects dissolving into digital triangles.

*ALO* has several differences from SAO including the voluntary flight mechanic, in which players visualize and learn to use flight muscles they never had; another is the death mechanic, whereby the dying player bursts into flames and is left there as a residual light that still allows the player to observe developments around them and has a 600-second timeout until magical resurrection or until the player respawns at a spawn point. Additionally, the moral code is slightly different and cannot be disabled in SO.

Environment

Yui mentioned ALO's presentation structure is only different from SAO by an overlay of remodeling and rebalancing, as well as the AIs being changed to become Navigation Pixies.

Global framework

In Salvation, each race lived in its own biome on the continent of ALfheim in the mixed Celtic and Norse myth world; it had several small neutral territories, and the central city of Alne, located near the base of the World Tree, was also neutral.

Following the imprisonment of Nobuyuki Sugou and the release of New ALO, a content patch introduced the floating castle Aincrad into ALfheim, known as New Aincrad.

Gameplay

After equipping the player with their FullDive gear, they choose one of nine races, each with their own unique merits and elemental affinities. The game's avatar's cosmetics are randomly generated unless the player pays an in-game fee, and the gender is the same as in real life. After that, the new player appears in the race's hometown. In Kirito's case, he appeared in a forest in the middle of nowhere.

Courses

|Race [IPA pronunciation] | Description|
None
None Cait Sith [kɛt ʃī] | Beast tamers with excellent eyesight. They have cat ears and tails. (The non-standard pronunciation is traditional in Japanese fantasy settings.) None
None Gnome [noʊm] | Users of the Earth element, the greatest of the fairies. Stylized in brown.
None Pixie [ɪmp] | Night magic users with superior night vision. Styled in purple. |
None Leprechaun [lɛprəkɔn] | Blacksmiths. Steampunk style. |
None Pooka [pukə] | Masters of magical music that can sustain, confuse, and even strike. |
None Salamander [sæləmændər] | A race that prioritizes firepower and uses fire spells. Stylized in red. |
None Spriggan [sprigən] | Illusion is their element, as is the search for treasure. Noir style.|
None Sylph [sɪlf] | Wind magic users, the fastest race. They tend to have hair with touches of green.
None Undine [undīne] | Water magic users and healers. Stylized in blue. (The non-standard pronunciation is traditional in Japanese fantasy settings.) None
None Navigation Pixie [pɪksɪ] | Non-playable creatures. Controlled by AI. Available as player aids for real money or as raffle prizes. |
None Alf [alv] | A race that was supposed to be able to fly without limits, but never actually existed and only served to further incentivize players to reach the inaccessible Sky Castle. |

User interface

Most of the time it's the same as in SAO . Only notable differences will be mentioned.

Head-up display

Mana Point (MP) gauges have been added to the HUD.

Fight

In the new Salvation, sword skills and the original sword skill system added a lot of variety to battles, and duels had a new option to select the SAO or ALO system for the fight.

Upon dying, the player becomes a Remain Light and suffers a stat penalty. With magic like Sacrifice, the player's death itself causes damage, but the penalty is much greater.