Bandai Namco announced a playable demo of Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris will be available during the "SAO Beater's Meeting 2019" event organized by Dengeki in Tokyo on August 18. Ahead of the event, Dengeki showed some of the demo on August 16, during a live stream.Please note that this article contains spoilers on the Alicization arc of Sword Art Online, if you've never read or watched it. In my opinion, you shouldn't care and keep reading, because Alicization ends up sucking hard, is way too long, and is one of the worst parts of SAO anyway.

The gameplay part starts at the timestamp embedded above. On the stream, they explained how Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris' demo is divided into two selectable parts. The first part features Kirito and Alice in Rulid Village and its region. The second part lets us control Kirito in a boss fight against Eugeo on the 99th floor of Central Cathedral. They ended up showing the first part on stream, but the SAO game official Twitter posted a video of the Eugeo boss fight. I've included it at the end of this article.

Here are the controls in the demo. The characters can use Sword Skills, Sacred Arts, and Battle Skills.

First off, they stressed out how SAO Alicization Lycoris is still in development, so the final game will be pretty different from what we're seeing here. The demo has a 10 minutes time limit and the characters are immortal, so people can focus on discovering the game without worrying about getting a game over. Rulid Village has plenty of people in it, but the game's dialogues aren't done yet so they didn't show any.

You can also change anytime between controlling Kirito or Alice. The game also has a circle quick menu to change which Sacred Arts (basically magic) you're using. Sacred Arts have elemental attributes, and enemies have varying elemental weaknesses. Sword Skills are also attributed to button shortcuts.

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris also has a weather system. A clock is displayed on the bottom right of the screen. We also got to see the Rulid Village region's map. The map has various icons on it indicating things like ongoing quests. You can also use it for fast-travel.

Later on, we saw a boss battle. Then, they explained how you can give orders to the party members you're not controlling, like ordering them to use a certain Sword Skill. If you use a Sword Skill at the same time as another party member, you can start a Chain Burst. If you keep linking Sword Skills with the party members, the Chain Burst will keep going, increasing your damage. We could see for example Kirito and Alice both using Vorpal Strike, triggering a Chain Burst.

You can charge Sacred Arts and make them more powerful, but you're vulnerable when charging. Once a Sacred Art is charged, you can store it, start attacking and trigger it at any time to chain it into a combo. You can also cancel Sword Skills into Sacred Arts.

They also mentioned how the type of orders and strategies you can give to party member will increase as you progress through the game. The game also has Battle Skills you can use for effects like healing or buffs.

Announced back in March, Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris will be launching on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and has no release estimate yet.

Here's the Eugeo gameplay from Twitter, and another look on the spider boss fight with Kirito and Alice: