Bandai Namco has released a new Ver. 1.09 patch for Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris that makes it easier for players to skip content that they don’t really want to experience, additional options for text speed and camera control, and more.
The biggest additions to the update are two new modes, “Semi-auto Mode” and “Lightplay Mode,” where each provide different options for different demographics of players. Semi-auto Mode will simplify the game’s combat, which is perfect for those who mainly just want to experience the story content of the game at a brisk pace. Meanwhile, Lightplay Mode is a skip mode of sorts, allowing SAO Alicization Lycoris players to cruise through the story of Chapter 1. Now players who might not necessarily have a problem with combat but don’t want to play through events covered in the anime or light novels can easily reach the game-original story in Chapter 2 more quickly.
In addition to the new SAO Alicization Lycoris skip mode, new Finish Arts have been added to Wayfarer ReoNa, the partymember based on the singer of the opening theme of the game. A new Raid Dungeon Extreme has also been added for players deep into the game’s content.
Finally, many adjustments have been made to the game, such as adding options to fix the camera position, reduce particle effects in battle, tutorials for additional features, and making it so that the player character will recover HP when successfully landing an Ally Skill, among others. There are also improvements to the overall play experience, such as making it so that players can also now receive multiple CUBE tickets at once online, and sell multiple copies of items at once at stores. You can read the full list of notes (with some addressing platform-specific issues) via the official page here.
SAO Alicization Lycoris is available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. A previous patch addressed framerate issues.
