Sword Art Online: Integral Factor

Similar to the anime series, users play as the protagonist of the story in the same environment as the anime's characters, who also take part in the user's journey. The user must aim to clear all 100 floors of the Aincrad and level up their avatar to increase their strength and abilities. Users can party up with other players from all over the world to do boss raids and successfully beat bosses to reach the next floor of the Aincrad.

Users fight using several different types of weapons, ranging from swords, rapiers, spears, daggers and many more. Users also have access to special powerful attacks known as Sword Skills which can be activated after their cooldown period ends. Users can equip up to three sword skills and perform this with other players in quick succession, which is known as a Switch. Skills are classified based on their number of stars, with five being the strongest and one being the weakest, and can be obtained by buying Orders from the shop or as rewards from quests or special events.

Users can also equip potions in their potion slots to heal up while in battle. Just like skill slots, users have can equip up to three different potions at once.

In the year 2022, the first full-dive VRMMO game known as Sword Art Online was released to the world, and only 10,000 players were able to get a copy for themselves. On the day of the game's release, all 10,000 users ended up trapped in the game. You, a beta tester, get trapped in the game as well, where you meet another beta tester named Koharu, who you played with during the beta test and promised to meet in the full game. Without realising that you're trapped yet, you help her practice her skills in battle, before realising that the logout button is missing from the game menu.

You and Koharu are forced to grab as many resources as possible for survival and battle your way to the 100th floor to clear the game, during which all players will be released from the game. However, dying in the game also means dying in real life. During your journey, you meet several people who accompany you on your journey through the death game.

A short manga [1] reveals that you eventually find out that Koharu is extremely scared of dying, so you volunteer to train her and the two of you boost your stats together. Before long, you meet a player named Sachi. Koharu makes a promise to Sachi, saying that she'll survive a boss raid that you are about to take part in.

During the boss raid, you battle alongside your party's leader, Diavel, as well as Kirito and Asuna, the main protagonists of the original anime series. Diavel attempts to take the last attack, but is unsuccessful, causing you to shield him from the boss’ deathly blows. He survives, and Kirito gets the last attack bonus instead, causing other members of the raid party to accuse him of being a beater, or a beta tester and cheater rolled into one.

The rest of the story is continued in the video game, which currently covers floors 1-25. However, the events of floors 15-19 are not covered in the game.

Users exchange in-game currency known as Col for shop items. However, users can also spend Arcana Gems in the Arcana Gem Shop for special, featured or limited items and skills. Arcana Gems have more value and are harder to obtain, and are usually given out as rewards from earning achievements. Besides killing monsters or clearing floors, users can also earn Col by exchanging event items for it, but the game allows users to do this in limited amounts only, usually ranging from 100,000 to 300,000 Col.