When Bandai Namco announced the localization and release of Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment, the company said that the PS4 release would feature a new translation. Then, the company neglected to share any trailers or screenshots with any text. It wasn’t exactly encouraging. Fortunately for us, the promise was kept!
I performed a side-by-side comparison of the first hour of both Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment and Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment. The results were absolutely shocking. I went in playing the PS4 version and taking random screenshots, hoping that there would at least be changes in a handful of them.
Instead, I found the entire script has received massive edits. Some scenes were unrecognizable. I passed up a scene where Philia described her stealth and lock-picking skills in the Vita version because it didn’t exist there. An aside had been expounded on for the PS4 release.
With that, I’m here to share some comparison shots. On the left are the screenshots from Sword Art Online Re: Hollow Fragment. The right has ones taken from the original Vita release. There’s quite a difference, from dialogue to tutorial explanation, with a focus on making conversations flow more naturally.
