My thought on 0.35;
The Asu/Ino treehouse POV seemed really... badly written, but I could tell there was also dodgy translation at play. Neither Asuna nor Inoda seemed consistant with how they've acted in the past; Inoda doing his 'the puppy obeys' thing, and Asuna just seemed all over the place. I'll have to rewatch it to double check.
The end of the school arc going into a corporate arc will make it feel less like SAO, I feel. Slowly but surely we're drifting further and further away from anything canon based and more into Fujino's alt universe, which I know is already all over the place regarding the timeline. Maybe it's just a way for Fujino to inject his own experiences as an overworked corporate slave.
The ongoing substory with Klein and Alice would probably have been better as a separate spin-off game, at this point. The more it goes on, the more I think 'Alice as a real person' was a bad move. It completely guts and undermines all of Alicization, so none of that plot can happen as we know it, nor even be referenced properly. If this is set post Alicization, then everyone would have known who Alice was and she wouldn't be a random cop. She's not even a Fluctlight as is.
But thinking about it, we have the school -> company plot as the Real World story, and I guess Fujino needed more of a plot for 'in FOG' and that's where all the underground investigation comes in. The 'ntr plot' of Asuna falling for Inoda is sort of weaved throughout these other plots.
I liked the development of Leafa, but it's also weird that neither Kirito or Klein knows it's Suguha yet. I like that Asada got some screentime and development again, but I want to see where this is going. I like when the side girls have short developments that we discover while doing something else; it shows that their stories and characters are ongoing even without us handholding them.
The blowjob scenes were great. The camping trip is a cool setup and I hope the next couple of updates really make the most of it, along with Inoda's powers and Asuna's growing willingness to help him cum.
And oh yeah, this version is buggy as fuck. Softlocks, glitched maps and frequent crashes. I'm wondering if the amount of content is starting to tax the game engine. I can easily see this needing to become a Part 3 and maybe Part 4, given how much progress is left that is planned.
I dunno. We got more out out the update than we were expecting, but I can't tell if I liked it or not.
The main core issue between all of these is that Fujino clearly knows/cares for SAO a lot less than he did for previous games he worked in. While still ignoring the logic of their universe for the sake of NTR, you could tell he seemed way more invested in the Fate characters and in having a semblance of how their lives/setting worked to create his NTR parodies of them, but with the SAO ones he clearly seems to only superficially know or care for them and has no issue constantly twisting everything for the sake of the plot he wants to tell.
This is not a BAD thing per se, and you can tell he's really doing his best, but it also makes, as you said, the game to feel less and less like SAO the more it goes on, and with some parts never having really felt like it or its characters at all. The entire Alice storyline and Administrator being an IRL Goddess are the most blatant showing of these, for example, as they have absolutely nothing to do with their original SAO characters, they're just OCs wearing their faces created for the sake to add another plot to the game, one that hilariously despite Alice winning the poll that brought her to this game in the first place is one I'm sure NOBODY wanted when they voted for her, but I bet nobody was really thinking of how Fujino would have to introduce her into his twisted NTR AU that never even reached GGO, they were just thinking "Alice in the NTR game!".
Even as someone that doesn't really care for NTR I can understand basically nobody being invested in her plot, especially so now that Fujino is trying to push this very forced 'romance' with Klein to make her storyline 'actually real NTR' (Rather than the not-really-being-it one of Suguha), because I bet when the people who wanted her in the game voted for Alice they were thinking of the Canon Alice who was the most 'agressive' in opposing Asuna in regards of Kirito and imaging her being not-NTR-ed from Kirito (Probably to see him suffer more lol), not THIS plot that Fujino has gone with because having tried to make Police Girl Alice really fall for Kirito when he clearly isn't interested would have been too forced even for his NTR AU-verse I guess :3
Ok i will try to limit myself to argue about the world building etc because those topics will always be a touchy subject, but am i the only one who didnt had any problems with the current update yet?
i probably dodged the trainstation-home one, but i never glitched anywhere and only had ONE crash during a map change so far...
You're actually lucky then, yeah XD Crashes aside, which is honestly expected and why the auto-save function is there for ever since Part 1 anyway, that one game-breaking bug was annoying af.
My initial thought was that they might do the massages in separate tents to make up for not doing it Friday cuz of Kirito getting called away by Alice, but I think it would be a big stretch for Kirito to allow Inoda to give Asuna a massage at this point.
Maybe we'll get the scene from the main menu, or they'll just go out at night to bang in the woods.
I mean, to be fair, it's not like Inoda doesn't have all the plot-powers he needs to do whatever he wants anyway XD He just has to tell Kirito he has to take a leak or something and then use his powers so even if Kirito wakes up for some plot-reason and looks at the other tent he would only see Asuna and Liz's silhouettes and not him
Then Kirito goes back to sleep and Inoda can spend the whole night fucking Asuna (And maybe even Liz if this camping trip is where Fujino plans for her to finally fall/be disappointed in Kirito, though it's unlikely it may happen yet if we're going into a whole new arc)
