The user must aim to clear all 100 floors of the Aincrad and level up their avatar to increase their strength and abilities. The player character, a beta tester, gets trapped in the game as well, where they meet another beta tester named Koharu, whom they played with during the test and promised to meet in the full game. During the journey, the player meets several people who accompany them on their journey through the death game.
A short manga reveals that the player eventually finds out Koharu is extremely scared of dying, so they volunteer to train her and the two boost their stats together. Koharu makes a promise to Sachi, saying that she will survive a boss raid that the group is about to take part in.
During the boss raid, the player battles alongside the 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 the player to shield him from the boss's 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 1–99. Users can equip up to four sword skills and perform this with other players in quick succession, which is known as a Switch. 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, the maximum col you can have is 99,999,999 cols.
