ACE Academy Review (DBladez)
This is the first visual novel I ever played though visual novels aren't new to me. One day, I decided to play a visual novel by looking through a bunch of recommendations on the internet and Ace Academy is the one that caught my eyes.
The game is fully English and surprisingly good, this is coming from someone who always prefers English sub over English dub. The voice acting really suits the characters. I know a lot of people hate English dub, but you should really give this one a chance.
The art is simple, yet gorgeous. There are specific scenes you can only unlock by choosing specific choices and routes. You can access it through "extras" if you want to take a look at it again or even save it. The only complaint regarding the art is reused backgrounds and insignificant characters represented by silhouettes. But it is understandable as PixelFade mentioned having limited budget at that time due to it being a crowd funded project.
The soundtracks are great and beautiful, and used at the right time to give the player some feeling.
As mentioned in the description, this is a slice-of-life ,romcom visual novel and I really enjoyed the story overall. The comedy was hilarious and got me laughing many times. I have played all routes and they were all unique and captivating in its own way. The romantic scenes were cute and heart warming. Like many reviews mention, the ending felt like an unfinished story and see
The characters all have distinct and unique personalities and there are 4 heroines to choose from. In a nutshell there's Yuuna (the innocent & kind girl), Valerie (the hot & smart girl), Kaori (your lovely tsundere) and Mayu (the shy & talented girl). You can also take a neutral route (Shou). I chose Yuuna as my first route because she was my most favorite but after playing Kaori's route, it instantly became a favorite. I loved all the routes nonetheless. I really hope all the heroines get a after story since currently only Kaori has one. I also wish we got to know more about Akira and Mei. A Mei route would be really nice because why not?
In conclusion, I highly recommend this game to visual novel lovers and look forward to an Ace Academy sequel.