Whether you're deeply entrenched in the anime community or just watch the occasional show on Netflix, you've likely heard of "Sword Art Online" before, at some point. This franchise took the world by storm when the anime adaptation of the light novel series by Reki Kawahara first aired in 2012. For better or for worse, "Sword Art Online" has become one of the most influential anime of our time, having arguably opened the floodgates of the isekai genre of light novels.

Now, no matter where you look, there are video game interfaces and traditional RPG game elements seem to be a part of almost every action fantasy anime. Yet, despite "Sword Art Online's" pretentions of being set in an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), I was disappointed by how little it felt like such.

Having been disappointed by Reki Kawahara's writing in the past, I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I decided to read his rebooted series, "Sword Art Online - Progressive". Well, imagine my surprise when I actually started liking the characters quite a bit. The game actually feels like a game and addresses topics and issues relevant to gamers.

The World of a Game

The original "Sword Art Online" featured a typical video game user interface, the concept of levels, skills, and items reminiscent to that of an RPG. This could have been an acceptable amount of world building back then, but these aspects are all so basic and easily integrated into any fantasy story at this point that it's lost a lot of its identity over the years. "Sword Art Online - Progressive" completely sidesteps this issue by including far more nuanced parts of MMORPG worlds and communities that make it far more resistant to aging poorly.

NPCs are Important in MMORPGs

"Sword Art Online - Progressive" puts a lot of focus on the nature of NPCs. When players enter certain quest lines, they are assigned an instance of the NPCs and interact with them for the duration of the story. If another party starts the same quest, a new instance of those NPCs supposedly gets generated for them. There's a lot more intrigue surrounding the mechanics of the NPCs compared to the original where Asuna wanted to use them as bait once, and then never brought them up again.

In particular, it seems that the NPCs in this version of Sword Art Online are artificial intelligences and self-aware of their role as disposable NPCs. Considering that this is the main theme of "Sword Art Online: Alicization" as well, I guess we know what Reki Kawahara's been interested in lately.

Real Gaming Problems

Another element of the world-building that I loved about "Sword Art Online - Progressive" is that they actually had an entire arc dedicated to scammers and hardware bugs. This is easily the high point in the story so far for me. One character had a defect in his nerve-gear that took away his depth perception in the game, making him essentially useless to his party.

In his frustration, he decides to abuse some loopholes in the game to scam players of their gear and use the money from that gear to fund his party that way. This is an absolutely brilliant way to showcase the age-old issue of malicious players in online games, but with a twist that fits the "Sword Art Online" death game narrative.

Subtle Gamer Behavior

Now, I played a lot of MMOs back in the day. My two favorites being "Cabal" and "Dragon Nest". I'm quite familiar with what it looks and sounds like to play MMOs with friends, and from my experience, "Sword Art Online - Progressive" is far closer to being genuine than the original. Small details like not listening to someone when you're new to a game and just want to have fun hitting things, being jealous because your friends get overpowered loot when you don't, all works to create the proper atmosphere of an MMORPG community.

Never Change, Reki

Now, all of the praise I've heaped on the story makes me confident that Reki has actually played an MMO for the first time since writing "Sword Art Online", but that doesn't mean Reki has fixed all of the problems that I had with his writing. First of all, the entire concept of blaming beta-testers still makes absolutely no sense unless you're a hardcore communist. If I were them, I would be trying to befriend any beta-tester I could find.

Also, it's explicitly stated that Sword Art Online is an MMORPG with LIMITED RESOURCES...What?! And Kibaou even says that the beta testers took all the "easy quests"...WHAT?! If one player does a quest, no one else gets to do it? Excuse me? Reki? I thought you actually learned what MMOs were. As I mentioned earlier, Reki himself wrote that quests create individual instances of NPCs so that everybody can play the damn game.

The only reason that this is how the game works is so that Reki can keep that "beater" plot from the original so that Kirito has a reason to be alone with Asuna. Mind you, that's more interesting than being completely alone and broody like the original. I'll appreciate the baby steps, I guess.

Conclusion

I'm happy to see Reki decide to rewrite the series that I felt has a lot of potential. Kirito and Asuna have infinitely more personality and are actually really fun to watch go through this world step by step rather than cutting around like the original. I would be really happy to see this turn into a long-running serialization like One Piece, but that's not likely to happen. As it stands, the volumes are being drip-fed at a rate of 2 every year, approximately.

I'd definitely consider "Sword Art Online - Progressive" to be a significant improvement from any of his previous works. It feels very fresh despite using some prominent tropes in recent fantasy manga. If you ever thought that you would be interested in "Sword Art Online" before, but just wasn't satisfied with the execution, I'd highly recommend giving this a shot.