Summer. The precious time of year where I have time to actually pick up a video game I haven't heard about on Steam and try it out. This time, a recently-released little visual novel called ACE Academy by PixelFade Studios, who seem to be a new developer, struck my fancy. It was modestly priced, and on sale to boot. The art looked really good, though I almost didn't pick it up because it rapidly became evident that it's a game about mecha, Japanese style, which is an aesthetic that I've never been a fan of. Plus, it was a visual novel I'd never heard of on Steam, which has recently become the home of an interminable torrent of terrible visual novels.
Still, I wanted something to play, and I hadn't actually played a visual novel in a while, so why not? I'm fond of the genre, and I'd like to find something really good that isn't Katawa Shoujo or Phoenix Wright. So it was that I found myself in the shoes of an American university student moving with his little sister to Japan to live with his uncle. The catch? I'm, incredibly, studying to become a mecha (Or as they're called in this universe, "GEAR") pilot. Gasp, shock, horror, never saw that one coming.
The thing that drew me in to begin with, the art, holds up. Backgrounds look nice, and most of the characters look really good. The one weird exception is that the male characters look pretty bad, their faces are mostly just kind of odd. Luckily, there's only three major male characters that you see on a regular basis, one of them barely shows up, and one of them is actually the one OK looking male character in the game, so it's not much of a problem.
So, I'm introduced to the characters little by little. First it's just Nikki, your sister, who I found annoying for about three minutes before realizing that she's incredibly charming and has fantastic chemistry with your main character. There's a fantastic familial connection between the two, an ease of behavior around the other, and plenty of incredibly endearing teasing. Soon after your uncle Kaito is introduced, who's a pleasant goofball. But soon, you're drip-fed the characters that will end up forming your GEAR team: Best Bro Shou, your incredibly kind manager Yuuna, fiery redhead Kaori, shy but smart Naori, and flirty engineer Best Girl Valerie (Yeah I went there fight me).
As you can probably tell, it's not exactly a set of incredibly novel character archetypes. There's a great scene where the characters actually comment in-universe on how Shou is basically just Yosuke from Persona 4, before going on to purposefully re-create one of the scenes from that game. The fact that they're archetypal isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. They're characters I've seen a thousand times, but done really well. Really impressively well, to be honest. Shou's not just a similar character to Yosuke, he actually rivals Yosuke in how much I like him, and Yosuke is one of my favorite characters in gaming full stop. All the other characters are on a similar level of good, except Naori, who I did find a bit dull. Part of why I like them so much is the writers aren't afraid to have the characters banter a lot. They're constantly teasing and making fun of each other (or even themselves), and it really does feel like a good approximation to my interactions with my friends at university. The massive amount of sex jokes Shou and the main character share is definitely realistic. These sex jokes feel in-universe, like banter between friends, and not a weird insert by the author, which is something I see very rarely with sex humor.
Most of the game is spent simply hanging out with these characters, whether these be segments where you get to choose which character you spend time with (and presumably increase some kind of affection value behind the scenes) or pre-determined plot segments. This is by far where ACE Academy is at its strongest. I like these characters a lot on a variety of different levels. There's comedy scenes that genuinely had me laughing out loud, a few sad scenes that are pretty touching, and a large amount of fantastic scenes where you're simply enjoying hanging out with your friends or spending time with your family. They're almost invariably great, and they're constantly providing you with choices. These choices often don't have any real effect outside of the immediate reaction of the people around you as far as I could tell, but they add a nice little bit of interactivity and variety to these scenes.
I guess this isn't completely true: there are definitely some choices that do affect the flow of the game. ACE Academy is tagged as a dating simulator on Steam, and whilst this isn't completely accurate there's definitely elements of this. As I mentioned before, every now and again you'll have the choice to hang out with one of a few other characters. At a point about three quarters through the game, you're presented with a choice between the characters you've chosen to hang out with the most. If you pick one of the girls, you'll usually start a relationship with them. As far as I understand it, even if you don't, or if you pick Shou, you still end up on a special "that character" route, with scenes with that character exclusive to the route.
I've only completed one route so far (Valerie's, of course, because Valerie is Best Girl), and it seemed that whilst this choice does have a decently large impact on the late game, most of the big scenes will still fold out the same way, and you're still able to have optional hang out scenes with the other characters just like before the choice. The scenes that seemed to result from me being locked into Valerie's route seemed to make up a small proportion of the game, even after the choice had been made. However, I'm not one hundred percent sure about this: it's possible that the changes to how the game unfolds are bigger than they appear to me right now. This is why I'm calling this a First Impressions and not a review: I'm not confident in giving a final verdict before I'm sure I've seen most of what the game has to offer.
Unfortunately, when it comes time to put aside hanging out with characters to develop the main plot, I loose interest. It's kind of bland, if I'm honest, and it doesn't often feel like there's a whole lot of momentum, pressure, or conflict of any kind. The main brunt of the plot concerns itself with a mysterious special ability your mech has, and the circumstances surrounding the death of your parents. This plot is incredibly predictable the whole way through, and the way it's dropped for long periods of time so we can concentrate on shenanigans with the main cast, whilst not unwelcome, doesn't do it a whole lot of favors.
This is mostly baseless speculation on my part, but I think Akira, the incredibly skilled pilot you build a friendly rivalry with, was in some early draft of the script meant to act as a villain for the main plot, but this got scrapped at some point in development. The position he has in the story (the clever handsome and popular guy you aspire to one day beat) makes it feel like he'd act as at least a harmless antagonist, but instead the narration often goes out of its way to point out how helpful and nice he is, and there's no hard feelings between you at any point. This isn't bad per say, I do like Akira as a character, but I can't help but wonder if the game would've been better served if he'd been an opposing force to add at least a bit more conflict and have at least some sort of personal stakes to feel strongly about in the plot. Considering how good the characterization is throughout the game, I'm sure the writers could've managed to make Akira hateable, or at least someone you wanted to take down a peg.
Before I wrap up, there's a couple things to mention I couldn't really find a place for in the bulk of the review: Every character other than your own is voice-acted. This is of varying quality: Shou and Nikki feel really professionally done, whilst Kaori and Kaito (and a large part of the one-scene characters) tend to sound a bit flat or "I AM ACTING"-ish. I also feel there may have been a problem with direction: there's a weird rhythm to how a lot of the dialogue is read that feels very unnatural, and is as much of a problem with the best voice actors on the main cast as it is with the actors playing extremely minor side characters. It's easy to get used to after playing the game for ten or fifteen minutes, especially if you often just read the dialogue boxes and skip the audio like I do, but it is slightly off putting at first. Also, very occasionally, there'll be the odd dialogue box that either has only half the text voiced, or isn't voiced at all. Still, even with the flaws, I can't help but be impressed that a game like this is fully voice-acted, and at a relatively competent level.
The other thing to mention is the combat system, which I thought was ingeniously done: It must've been really simple to put together, but it's surprisingly good at conveying what it needs to, and as such impressively cost-effective. Combat in the game is rare, but when it does occur what happens is you're simply presented with a normal choice, with a bunch of options... and a short time limit. Most of the options will read things like "slow..." "miss..." or "juked!", but one or two will be things like "slash!" or "evade!", depending on the situation. The result is you've got to find a word describing success fast, and then manage to click it on time. Because the time limits aren't all that tight it tends to be relatively easy, but in the moment it feels surprisingly exciting. In a very abstract way, it does mimic the "quickly figure out what to do and do it" that you'd imagine would go on in a mecha fight like this. I am honestly surprised at how effective such a simple mechanic is, and I can't help but be impressed by how clever it is.
One final thing, and by far my biggest complaint with the game (Unless this changes in other routes): It's too damn short. It honestly felt like it only just got going before completely unexpectedly and awkwardly grinding to a halt. This is frustrating for two reasons.
First, I really wanted to hang out more with these characters that I really like. It just didn't feel like I spent enough time around them considering just how good these are. I honestly feel like part of my problem here is the Persona 4 comparison that the game itself drew: Persona 4 is at least 60 hours long, and when ACE Academy brought it up I at least expected I'd be spending a long time around these characters. After all, part of Persona 4's strength is simply the sheer amount of time you get to spend interacting with those people. Obviously the 60+ hours of a Persona 4 is ridiculous for a 15 Euro visual novel, and there's no way I expected that sort of length, but I at least expected I'd get the satisfyingly lengthy 6-7 hours of something like a Katawa Shoujo. Instead, I got 4 hours according to Steam, and I left the game on whilst doing other stuff for at least 20 minutes, so it's likely that it's closer to 3 and a half. This was with plenty of scrolling back to see all the results on particularly entertaining choices. I'm not annoyed at this because I feel like I didn't get enough bang for my buck (though I can see someone having this complaint), I'm annoyed because these characters are so good that allowing me to grow so fond of them only to have so little time to spend around them seems like a giant waste of solid writing, and a bit of a raised middle finger to me.
Second, and more importantly, it really hurts the plot. I remember thinking to myself, about two minutes before the game unceremoniously cut to credits "Finally, this story is getting started". Then it just ended. What we have in the game isn't a story, it's a very long first act to a story. It really does just stop. There's resolution to one of the mysteries surrounding the character's father. We completely cut short at least three major plot strands, and a large amount of subplots. I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't say it enough: It just feels like it's cut short. I strongly suspect budgetary issues, because the game is ridiculously polished, and feels extremely high-quality in terms of presentation, especially for what (as far as I can tell from their website) is the first project of a small indie team. I can't even say the ending sucks because there's simply no ending, and that's a shame: this game is really good otherwise.
ACE Academy was an incredibly pleasant surprise for me. I expected next to nothing from it coming in, and instead I got some of the best characters I've had the pleasure to interact with in this genre. I played this game in two just-under-two-hour chunks, and by the end of the first chunk I was starting to consider this a contender for my top 20 games of all time. The writing is top-tier, and the visuals are excellent. There were some dampers when it came to the voice acting and the main story, but the former was easily forgiven and the latter was overshadowed by just how great the cast of characters was, and the fact that a good proportion of scenes weren't part of said weak plot.
Through most of my second session I was just as happy with the game (if not even more) as before. The characters kept getting better and better, and the story, whilst still far from great, gained some tiny bit of momentum. Unfortunately, the game suddenly ended in an incredibly unsatisfying manner. I couldn't spend more time with these characters I liked, and the plot just stopped literally within a couple of minutes of me finally starting to get interested. It really felt like I ran into a concrete wall. It really didn't sit well with me, and retroactively soured the whole experience a fair bit.
Still, I really love ACE Academy. It's got several massive flaws, but for most of its run time it really was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, the ending really does put a massive damper on it by being just ludicrously abrupt and unsatisfying. However, it's overall still a phenomenal experience. I heartily recommend it to people who are fond of that very specific flavor of "anime game" that a lot of the social interactions in things like Persona 4 come under, and not-quite-as-heartily but still enthusiastically to those who just like good, fun, characters. I'll definitely be coming back to this one and trying out different routes, though I strongly suspect they won't be different enough to significantly change my mind, especially on the massive issue that is the ending (or lack thereof).
If there turn out to be big changes worth commenting on, I might come back and review each route individually, similarly to how I (almost) did with Katawa Shoujo (Lilly's route review will come... eventually...). If the other routes end up significantly changing how much I like the game for better or worse, but not being all that different to this one in terms of plot (especially the ending), I'll write a short piece to make that clear. If not, this'll be my only piece on the game.
I'm not going to give this a real official score, not unless I come back to it on the blog, but I will tell you that as it is right now I'd probably give it a low 9. ACE Academy is really, really good, and for its significant flaws I'm really glad for the time I spent on it. I'll look forward to PixelFade's next game, Crystalline, and any of their projects after that. These guys are already a really good studio, and I can't wait to see how their work improves as they gain experience.
Still, I wanted something to play, and I hadn't actually played a visual novel in a while, so why not? I'm fond of the genre, and I'd like to find something really good that isn't Katawa Shoujo or Phoenix Wright. So it was that I found myself in the shoes of an American university student moving with his little sister to Japan to live with his uncle. The catch? I'm, incredibly, studying to become a mecha (Or as they're called in this universe, "GEAR") pilot. Gasp, shock, horror, never saw that one coming.
The thing that drew me in to begin with, the art, holds up. Backgrounds look nice, and most of the characters look really good. The one weird exception is that the male characters look pretty bad, their faces are mostly just kind of odd. Luckily, there's only three major male characters that you see on a regular basis, one of them barely shows up, and one of them is actually the one OK looking male character in the game, so it's not much of a problem.
So, I'm introduced to the characters little by little. First it's just Nikki, your sister, who I found annoying for about three minutes before realizing that she's incredibly charming and has fantastic chemistry with your main character. There's a fantastic familial connection between the two, an ease of behavior around the other, and plenty of incredibly endearing teasing. Soon after your uncle Kaito is introduced, who's a pleasant goofball. But soon, you're drip-fed the characters that will end up forming your GEAR team: Best Bro Shou, your incredibly kind manager Yuuna, fiery redhead Kaori, shy but smart Naori, and flirty engineer Best Girl Valerie (Yeah I went there fight me).
As you can probably tell, it's not exactly a set of incredibly novel character archetypes. There's a great scene where the characters actually comment in-universe on how Shou is basically just Yosuke from Persona 4, before going on to purposefully re-create one of the scenes from that game. The fact that they're archetypal isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. They're characters I've seen a thousand times, but done really well. Really impressively well, to be honest. Shou's not just a similar character to Yosuke, he actually rivals Yosuke in how much I like him, and Yosuke is one of my favorite characters in gaming full stop. All the other characters are on a similar level of good, except Naori, who I did find a bit dull. Part of why I like them so much is the writers aren't afraid to have the characters banter a lot. They're constantly teasing and making fun of each other (or even themselves), and it really does feel like a good approximation to my interactions with my friends at university. The massive amount of sex jokes Shou and the main character share is definitely realistic. These sex jokes feel in-universe, like banter between friends, and not a weird insert by the author, which is something I see very rarely with sex humor.
Most of the game is spent simply hanging out with these characters, whether these be segments where you get to choose which character you spend time with (and presumably increase some kind of affection value behind the scenes) or pre-determined plot segments. This is by far where ACE Academy is at its strongest. I like these characters a lot on a variety of different levels. There's comedy scenes that genuinely had me laughing out loud, a few sad scenes that are pretty touching, and a large amount of fantastic scenes where you're simply enjoying hanging out with your friends or spending time with your family. They're almost invariably great, and they're constantly providing you with choices. These choices often don't have any real effect outside of the immediate reaction of the people around you as far as I could tell, but they add a nice little bit of interactivity and variety to these scenes.
I guess this isn't completely true: there are definitely some choices that do affect the flow of the game. ACE Academy is tagged as a dating simulator on Steam, and whilst this isn't completely accurate there's definitely elements of this. As I mentioned before, every now and again you'll have the choice to hang out with one of a few other characters. At a point about three quarters through the game, you're presented with a choice between the characters you've chosen to hang out with the most. If you pick one of the girls, you'll usually start a relationship with them. As far as I understand it, even if you don't, or if you pick Shou, you still end up on a special "that character" route, with scenes with that character exclusive to the route.
I've only completed one route so far (Valerie's, of course, because Valerie is Best Girl), and it seemed that whilst this choice does have a decently large impact on the late game, most of the big scenes will still fold out the same way, and you're still able to have optional hang out scenes with the other characters just like before the choice. The scenes that seemed to result from me being locked into Valerie's route seemed to make up a small proportion of the game, even after the choice had been made. However, I'm not one hundred percent sure about this: it's possible that the changes to how the game unfolds are bigger than they appear to me right now. This is why I'm calling this a First Impressions and not a review: I'm not confident in giving a final verdict before I'm sure I've seen most of what the game has to offer.
Unfortunately, when it comes time to put aside hanging out with characters to develop the main plot, I loose interest. It's kind of bland, if I'm honest, and it doesn't often feel like there's a whole lot of momentum, pressure, or conflict of any kind. The main brunt of the plot concerns itself with a mysterious special ability your mech has, and the circumstances surrounding the death of your parents. This plot is incredibly predictable the whole way through, and the way it's dropped for long periods of time so we can concentrate on shenanigans with the main cast, whilst not unwelcome, doesn't do it a whole lot of favors.
This is mostly baseless speculation on my part, but I think Akira, the incredibly skilled pilot you build a friendly rivalry with, was in some early draft of the script meant to act as a villain for the main plot, but this got scrapped at some point in development. The position he has in the story (the clever handsome and popular guy you aspire to one day beat) makes it feel like he'd act as at least a harmless antagonist, but instead the narration often goes out of its way to point out how helpful and nice he is, and there's no hard feelings between you at any point. This isn't bad per say, I do like Akira as a character, but I can't help but wonder if the game would've been better served if he'd been an opposing force to add at least a bit more conflict and have at least some sort of personal stakes to feel strongly about in the plot. Considering how good the characterization is throughout the game, I'm sure the writers could've managed to make Akira hateable, or at least someone you wanted to take down a peg.
Before I wrap up, there's a couple things to mention I couldn't really find a place for in the bulk of the review: Every character other than your own is voice-acted. This is of varying quality: Shou and Nikki feel really professionally done, whilst Kaori and Kaito (and a large part of the one-scene characters) tend to sound a bit flat or "I AM ACTING"-ish. I also feel there may have been a problem with direction: there's a weird rhythm to how a lot of the dialogue is read that feels very unnatural, and is as much of a problem with the best voice actors on the main cast as it is with the actors playing extremely minor side characters. It's easy to get used to after playing the game for ten or fifteen minutes, especially if you often just read the dialogue boxes and skip the audio like I do, but it is slightly off putting at first. Also, very occasionally, there'll be the odd dialogue box that either has only half the text voiced, or isn't voiced at all. Still, even with the flaws, I can't help but be impressed that a game like this is fully voice-acted, and at a relatively competent level.
The other thing to mention is the combat system, which I thought was ingeniously done: It must've been really simple to put together, but it's surprisingly good at conveying what it needs to, and as such impressively cost-effective. Combat in the game is rare, but when it does occur what happens is you're simply presented with a normal choice, with a bunch of options... and a short time limit. Most of the options will read things like "slow..." "miss..." or "juked!", but one or two will be things like "slash!" or "evade!", depending on the situation. The result is you've got to find a word describing success fast, and then manage to click it on time. Because the time limits aren't all that tight it tends to be relatively easy, but in the moment it feels surprisingly exciting. In a very abstract way, it does mimic the "quickly figure out what to do and do it" that you'd imagine would go on in a mecha fight like this. I am honestly surprised at how effective such a simple mechanic is, and I can't help but be impressed by how clever it is.
One final thing, and by far my biggest complaint with the game (Unless this changes in other routes): It's too damn short. It honestly felt like it only just got going before completely unexpectedly and awkwardly grinding to a halt. This is frustrating for two reasons.
First, I really wanted to hang out more with these characters that I really like. It just didn't feel like I spent enough time around them considering just how good these are. I honestly feel like part of my problem here is the Persona 4 comparison that the game itself drew: Persona 4 is at least 60 hours long, and when ACE Academy brought it up I at least expected I'd be spending a long time around these characters. After all, part of Persona 4's strength is simply the sheer amount of time you get to spend interacting with those people. Obviously the 60+ hours of a Persona 4 is ridiculous for a 15 Euro visual novel, and there's no way I expected that sort of length, but I at least expected I'd get the satisfyingly lengthy 6-7 hours of something like a Katawa Shoujo. Instead, I got 4 hours according to Steam, and I left the game on whilst doing other stuff for at least 20 minutes, so it's likely that it's closer to 3 and a half. This was with plenty of scrolling back to see all the results on particularly entertaining choices. I'm not annoyed at this because I feel like I didn't get enough bang for my buck (though I can see someone having this complaint), I'm annoyed because these characters are so good that allowing me to grow so fond of them only to have so little time to spend around them seems like a giant waste of solid writing, and a bit of a raised middle finger to me.
Second, and more importantly, it really hurts the plot. I remember thinking to myself, about two minutes before the game unceremoniously cut to credits "Finally, this story is getting started". Then it just ended. What we have in the game isn't a story, it's a very long first act to a story. It really does just stop. There's resolution to one of the mysteries surrounding the character's father. We completely cut short at least three major plot strands, and a large amount of subplots. I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't say it enough: It just feels like it's cut short. I strongly suspect budgetary issues, because the game is ridiculously polished, and feels extremely high-quality in terms of presentation, especially for what (as far as I can tell from their website) is the first project of a small indie team. I can't even say the ending sucks because there's simply no ending, and that's a shame: this game is really good otherwise.
ACE Academy was an incredibly pleasant surprise for me. I expected next to nothing from it coming in, and instead I got some of the best characters I've had the pleasure to interact with in this genre. I played this game in two just-under-two-hour chunks, and by the end of the first chunk I was starting to consider this a contender for my top 20 games of all time. The writing is top-tier, and the visuals are excellent. There were some dampers when it came to the voice acting and the main story, but the former was easily forgiven and the latter was overshadowed by just how great the cast of characters was, and the fact that a good proportion of scenes weren't part of said weak plot.
Through most of my second session I was just as happy with the game (if not even more) as before. The characters kept getting better and better, and the story, whilst still far from great, gained some tiny bit of momentum. Unfortunately, the game suddenly ended in an incredibly unsatisfying manner. I couldn't spend more time with these characters I liked, and the plot just stopped literally within a couple of minutes of me finally starting to get interested. It really felt like I ran into a concrete wall. It really didn't sit well with me, and retroactively soured the whole experience a fair bit.
Still, I really love ACE Academy. It's got several massive flaws, but for most of its run time it really was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, the ending really does put a massive damper on it by being just ludicrously abrupt and unsatisfying. However, it's overall still a phenomenal experience. I heartily recommend it to people who are fond of that very specific flavor of "anime game" that a lot of the social interactions in things like Persona 4 come under, and not-quite-as-heartily but still enthusiastically to those who just like good, fun, characters. I'll definitely be coming back to this one and trying out different routes, though I strongly suspect they won't be different enough to significantly change my mind, especially on the massive issue that is the ending (or lack thereof).
If there turn out to be big changes worth commenting on, I might come back and review each route individually, similarly to how I (almost) did with Katawa Shoujo (Lilly's route review will come... eventually...). If the other routes end up significantly changing how much I like the game for better or worse, but not being all that different to this one in terms of plot (especially the ending), I'll write a short piece to make that clear. If not, this'll be my only piece on the game.
I'm not going to give this a real official score, not unless I come back to it on the blog, but I will tell you that as it is right now I'd probably give it a low 9. ACE Academy is really, really good, and for its significant flaws I'm really glad for the time I spent on it. I'll look forward to PixelFade's next game, Crystalline, and any of their projects after that. These guys are already a really good studio, and I can't wait to see how their work improves as they gain experience.
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