[Qoo Review] SINoALICE Day One Review: Still Loading…

Square Enix’s SINoALICE from NieR: Automata’s Yoko Taro. The game was incredibly well-received, with a phenomenal amount of pre-registerees. Just 20 minutes after the game launched, the servers overloaded to the extent that that game was set back almost an entire day. Without a doubt, SINoALICE is truly a controversial mobile game.

Despite all the launch hurdles, I have to admit that SINoALICE impresses players with some of its best aspects at the initial loading screen past the main title screen. The game shows off its impressive character designs in preparation for the player’s journey in the world of fairy tales. So without further ado, here are the pros and cons of Square Enix’s SINoALICE.

Pros

Visuals
Just like NieR: Automata, SINoALICE features incredibly attractive characters and the game flaunts its amazing illustration to players whenever they have a chance. Not only are the weapons and characters well designed, but also the UI and gacha animations inherits the praise-worthy visuals of NieR: Automata. The pair of dolls in the gacha page is definitely your source of motivation when re-rolling for the perfect SSR!

Audio
The soundtracks of SINoALICE is composed by Keiichi Okabe’s MONACA the studio behind the grand immersive soundtracks of NieR: Automata. For those who don’t usually play mobile games with the music on, I highly recommend you do with SINoALICE. The soundtracks properly set the right tone for each screen enhancing the game’s experience. (Audio Preview 1-2 , Audio Preview 3)

Multiplayer features
A great thing about SINoALICE is the ability to reconnect to multiplayer games when you disconnect from the game (trust me you’ll most definitely experience this first hand). This feature is quite refreshing to see in a mobile game, unfortunately, the constant need for it in SINoALICE really defeats the purpose of joining public groups.

Cons

Service
To be completely honest, currently, the game is nowhere near playable. Between the constant disconnections and infinite load times, there really isn’t much players can do in the game asides from appreciate the soundtrack of the game. Arguably this is just a temporary problem that comes with many game launches, but it is still a problem which directly affects player’s experience nonetheless.

Surprisingly, there’s more to add to the list of issues SINoALICE had on day one. Multiple cases of missing files were reported on both iOS and Android. It really takes a special kind of special to pull this off.

Gameplay
When you do finally get past the many loading screens, you’ll find that the gameplay isn’t anything particularly special. The core of the game is just another collectible RPG, but instead of a character gacha, you have a weapon gacha which determines the stats and skills your character has.

The game features a handful of special SSR weapons which unlocks special classes for different characters. Whilst this in some ways gives the game more depth, it doesn’t really make the gameplay any more special.

In Conclusion

There really isn’t a point bothering with the game right now. Between all the downtimes, disconnections, load times, and in some cases missing files, there really any space for players to actually come to enjoy the game.

 

Players are so prone to disconnecting from the servers or fall into infinite load times, SINoALICE is just a glorified music box with pretty pictures and a mini-game of guessing whether or not you’ll make it past the current load screen. Regardless of whether you do or not, one thing is for sure… You’ll be sick and tired of seeing this…

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