Sword Art Online Arcade: Deep Explorer Is SAO Meets Diablo With Online 3-Player Co-op

Bandai Namco recently announced the very first arcade for Sword Art Online with Sword Art Online Arcade: Deep Explorer that will have you explore with up to three players online in the explorative action RPG.

For those of you wondering what Sword Art Online: Deep Explorer is about, it’s being called an explorative action RPG that allows up to three players to cooperate together via online play. The arcade cabinet also dispenses cards for you to collect. There are two types of cards called Resource Cards and Profile Cards that you can use in the game.

Gameplay starts at the 2:19 mark of the video. Here are some notes shared in the video:

• The game has an original story where Kirito and friends dive into a new kind of VR world called Unknown and you’ll watch it through a device called the ViSTer, a VR monitor that is said to allow the player to peek inside the VR world.

• As for the story, basically something goes wrong where Kirito and friends’ UI no longer works in the game world, so it’ll be up to you to help guide them with the ability to see everything.

• The characters will actually talk to you, the player, a lot during gameplay, as they’ll be relying on you while exploring the Unknown.

• The left stick is used for movement that includes an L1 button for side steps. On the right part of the machine there are three Action Buttons that you can use to attack enemies. These colors correspond to your party members, so in the above demonstration it shows the blue one for Kirito, the green button for Asuna, and the red one for Lisbeth.

• Each stage comes with its own map which you simple follow from start to end.

• You’ll attack using the character in front, but using a different color makes it switch your leading character. That means you can mash the blue button for Kirito attacks then perform a follow-up using red for Asuna attacks.

• You can also hold down buttons for attacks. For example, you can charge attacks by holding the buttons of the other two characters and launch them from behind.

• You can increase skill levels to use abilities. They have a cooldown, but the lower level skills tend to have shorter cooldowns while the higher level skills have longer cooldowns but can dish out more damage.

• There are plenty of other actions such as Side Step Attacks, guarding, and more.

• While exploring you’ll come across various missions. The first one we see involves defeating four Holy Rock Dolls within the allotted time.

• At the end of the map we get to see a boss fight. This is where your skills come handy. Since regular attacks don’t do much against bosses, you’ll want to focus on skills. The key is to switch out of characters during  cooldowns and rotate with characters and their skills.

• Upon clearing a stage you’ll be rewarded with EXP to increase player rank, and you’ll also get some loot that can get you weapons and even new characters.

Sword Art Online Arcade: Deep Explorer launches for arcades in Japan in Spring 2019.