Title: Orange
Author: LeviTamm
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Status: In-Progress
Library Category:
Pairings:
Summary: Things went a little differently on that first day of the death game. Before Kayaba's announcement, Kirito had PKed another player. An action that permanently changed his cursor to orange. Now he's a criminal. The other players will hunt him down for that. The NPCs will refuse him service. He won't be able to trade with anyone anymore. He was completely alone now. Slight AU.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12881255/1/Orange

Rating : 4.5/5

The first day of the release of Sword Art Online, Kirito was farming to get ahead of the curve. A troll comes by and decides to steal his kills for fun. After trying to go to another farming point, Kirito decides he has enough and kills the player, becoming orange. It wouldn't have been a problem if he could have logged out, but once he learns SaO is no longer a game, he is forced to flee the beginning city and to become a solo player. In order to survive the game, since killing an orange player does not make you orange, he has to intensively farm in order to stay among the top players when it is about level. All the while not being able to stay in cities because of guards and even being insulted by NPCs for his orange player status.

Unfortunately, the game wasn't made for solo players, since cooperation is encouraged by the existence of many crafting skills that are interdepent to get the items a player needs and a player only has limited skill slots. Kirito will risk his life again and again to stay ahead and to learn the game mechanics in order to exploit them.

The author makes an excellent job of describing the game design of Sword Art Online and how Kirito exploits the game mechanics difference with real-world physics to do things that would otherwise be impossible. Kirito doesn't fight like a swordsman would fight in real life, and it is thoroughly explained why, the fights are quite impressively written.

Also, Kirito does not have any unfair advantage such as his dual-sword skill in canon, because it doesn't exist in this fanfiction. Beta-testers also are targeted by Kayaba Akihiko through traps that punish the foreknowledge of beta-testers, making countless casualties and almost killing Kirito himself.

No pairings.

The writing is excellent, and once Kirito is confident enough to interact with other players, there are absolutely hilarious moments which I won't spoil.

If Rep is here she will understand. *wink*

 

I’ve enjoyed it.

However, it’s stories like this where brevity is valued in my view. The last few chapters have had a lot of words but not a lot of progression. It finds about 10 different ways to say the same thing and it gets tired, fast.

The conversations between Kirito and Asuna these past two chapters, as well as Argo and Asuna this chapter bored me. I think if the author cut down on a lot of this the story would be much improved.

Because the sections about the game mechanics and Kirito on his own are weirdly the most interesting bits of the story! Him against the game and min maxing to the extreme is really fun to consider. His paranoia is a plot device but it’s a fun one if it gives us the in-depth considerations that happen.

I’ll give this a 3.5, rounded to 3. I think it can go up to a 4 if the fluff is cut out and the story becomes more focussed.

 

After a quick skim, at 20 chapters, 293k words they're nowhere near finishing the SA:O arc.
If there's one thing you don't have to worry about it's them exiting SA:O and moving on to the next arc any time soon. Or, to be honest, ever.

For reference, as of Chapter 20

Spoiler

Illfang, the first boss

is still alive.

 

Far, far too verbose and utterly tedious character banter/interactions in recent chapters.

I liked the whole true solo idea and early execution but the story is just completely bogged down.

And his reasoning behind staying solo in the latest chapter just burns me up. It's all so needless.

3/5 at best.

 

It's bad. It's really, really bad. The whole thing is just this weird mechanical wankfest instead of an interest in what this means for the characters or stories. If it wanted to run with "how you become a weird ass mountain man disconnected from society" that would possibly make for an interesting story, but you'd want to spend half the verbiage.