No. I f*cking hate the entire anime series but love playing the games. Although this game is... well has issues. I blame DIMPS for everything.

Personally I recommend playing Hollow Fragment, Lost Song and Hollow Realization over this one.

I see you're a man of culture as well Electro.

i played fb jus fine with no prior games before but i saw the anime but wasnt nessary

DOT hack is probably better than Sao least in my case the other games are good as well but the anime is meh if you seen any of the other games or just vids about them you get generaly what the anime is about anyway but nah just play there is kinda 0 need to know anything or see the anime.Bit warning tho they kinda made sneaky move to make more story in DLC and continue it in more DLCs sortha >.> you need all of them to see rest of story.

Still wish ALL the DOT hack games would come to Steam ):

In short, hell no.

Now, for a bit of a longer answer, the anime's storytelling is undeniably better than the game's. We could argue whether the anime is any good but the fact is, it is better than the game when it comes to the story. I had a good time with the GGO section of SAO2 but still couldn't drive myself to watch anything ALO related.

And since you're a fan of dot hack and CrossCode... Err... I'd recommend you skip SAO's story entirely. And quite frankly, you won't be missing much by skipping the story of these games, *especially* FB's. There's an overwhelming amount of lackluster character development, very veeeery little story progression, even less world building (nonexistent in FB), and everything is quite badly written anyway. If that's not enough, a lot of "cutscenes" either have the characters standing around in a circle babbling their asses off or as if this was a visual novel. Quite anticlimatic.

Not that you asked but since you mentioned you're a fan of dot hack and CrossCode (I also love CrossCode to bits), keep your expectations of SAO games as low as possible and just skip everything if you don't need to experience the story. Trust me when I say these games are better when you come up with your own stories and how your character interacts with the cast. Also helps if you come up with personalities for them cuz the developers, even when they cared to do that, weren't that good at it.

Do you need to know how to make a pizza just to eat it?

Not at all. At best, they'll reference it every now and then, but it's not important.

I've only bothered to watch season 1 and I'm doing fine. Besides, the show probably isn't really worth watching in the first place :P

You don't need to be familiar with the series to enjoy the game. I've never watched the actual SAO, only the online abridged series of it, and I enjoy this game. This game just uses the anime as a backdrop. Usually from what I've seen, most of the other SAO games tend to focus on the main character, Kirito, whereas Fatal Bullet includes them but focuses on your created character, so you don't need to be familiar with any of them, as they don't really contribute to the gameplay as they're only really party members to your character.

Tbh, some of these guys in this thread are just following the trend of hating on SAO. It's a pretty decent series overall and has a large fan base. I'd recommend at the very least reading a summary of SAO 1 and 2, then watch GGO and it's spin-off. You don't necessarily have to enjoy the series, but at least understanding and being familiar with it's characters will also contribute to your enjoyment of the game. They'll be talking to you for the majority of the cutscenes and reference some things that would seem annoying without actually knowing what they're referring to, especially since they mix things from other games and the series together (they're like alternate realities and not the exact same). The gameplay is average at best and the story is short, cringeworthy, and insultingly continues in DLC. If I'd never had any prior knowledge of SAO and bought this game, I'd be trying to get a refund...

Maybe to understand the part of Kirito mode.
But in general, I do not think it's necessary.

im gonna say not really. however some of the characters are card board cutouts without the anime

Originally posted by kswizzel:

im gonna say not really. however some of the characters are card board cutouts without the anime

Sinon, Yuuki and Philia were a well developed character for me.
although philia isn't a canon character, she's still better than asuna

Originally posted by <--『 Silver_Spectre 』-->:

Originally posted by kswizzel:

im gonna say not really. however some of the characters are card board cutouts without the anime

Sinon, Yuuki and Philia were a well developed character for me.
although philia isn't a canon character, she's still better than asuna

Im on board with you on those yuuki and sinon. Philia, if i remeber correctly, was
ehhhhh cause i have 0 clue who she was and i dont remeber getting much out of her, so i had to do my homework and play hollow fragment which doesnt really help fatal bullet's case cause credit would go to HF.

Sinon's quest was probally one of the most developed in the game. i literally sat watching people telling me that i won this or killed that but sinon's actually got me to phyiscally do it. However it is really awkward that ur hunting this rediculously rare sniper when u potentially can be holding it right infront of her lol

but yea ummm theres a good majority of the characters that are cardboard cutouts or just trash filler. they dont really have a impact on the story sadly and they dont referenced anything that occured so if you want to be immersed in the first sao game that puts u into the story, u might run into some issues. Expecially when u hit the dlcs. Good Lord lol

Also base on some of these thread im not trying to hate, i actually really want to luv some of these characters but i was denied :(

Originally posted by piiimen:

Do you need to know how to make a pizza just to eat it?

Well no but if you're interested in the history and back story of pizza and how it became to be, then yes.

As some one who watched the anime and read all the light novels.
No, you don't.

If anything, you get 1 Kirito Story ARC in this game, where you play the "fatal bullet" SAO story line (but its only for a few rounds) and after that its your own story. (In the Anime and the books, this arc was super short despised being one of the best ones.)
Honestly, all the games kinda follow the main plot line in general of SAO, but they actually have their own story timeline and characters.
The plot of SAO series and the SAO GAMES are parallel, they are similar, and head in the same direction, but they will never intersect.

If you are still concerned, you probably should play the previous games to understand who are all these people/npc's you meet when you started this game. But is not like they have any relevancy to this current game plot. Think of them as side characters that make the group bigger but that's about it. Every new NPC shines the most and contributes to the plot in its own game only, and that's it.

But I think this game is the best of the entire series, specially because this was made by the creators of FREEDOM WARS, who was the biggest seller in PS VITA back in the day. The big give away are the WHIP and Weapon Upgrades, they are supper addicting because they had experience in making FWars, and manage to transport the best of it in to this game. I played all games too and this is definitely that one game that fans and even NON-Fans can enjoy regardless.