logo

izigame.me

It may take some time when the page for viewing is loaded for the first time...

izigame.me

cover-ACE Academy

Tuesday, January 10, 2023 8:53:20 PM

ACE Academy Review (Laserhowl)

Around 9 hours for a single playthrough. I got through each of the "routes" (Mixed/Family, Shou, Yuuna, Mayu, Valerie, Kaori) once and it came out to around 24 hours (including waiting for the already-seen dialogue to be skipped over when doing new routes.) Even after that though there are many minor choices and combinations I noticed that would most likely add special dialogues that I didn't choose.
Regarding the story expect more slice of life rather than having it be plot focused. The routes are also more just experiencing different character interactions rather than branching into different narratives. The ending finishes with almost all of the main story buildup still unanswered. If you want a good story arc this isn't the game, if you just want a slice of life mixed with a nice choose-your-own-adventure then this is pretty good. At times the dialogue options made me feel like I was playing a good old-fashioned RPG instead of a Visual Novel. The breadth of options wasn't large, but you could still have many forms of the character you control. Better than the standard black-and-white replies of other visual novels (even though the game does still do that at times).
Voice acting was about what I expected. They do fairly well especially given that they were probably not given direction for every scene. This does mean the mannerisms/tones don't always match with the context. There are some missing and or half-missing voice lines mixed in along with a couple audio design errors. The music is pretty decent and well-made.
If you are unsatisfied after a single playthrough and don't usually play through multiple routes I'd encourage you to give this one a shot. You don't have to read the whole thing over again you can use the "skip-seen-text" feature to skip to all the parts you haven't read yet. Focus on a character and enjoy the ride. I was kinda indifferent after my first read, but came to enjoy the journey more after experiencing so many options.
The second half starts to show some of the flaws of having so many choices. Implied events that didn't occur earlier because you chose differently. These continuity errors really stick out and sours the overall experience. Most of the time they at least add a few tie in lines for stuff you may have missed/to catch you up to the scenes, but not always.

Concerning Quality of life this game had quite a few noticeable problems and missing features. Which is understandable for what this game is and when it came out. No Fullscreen support for Win10 (there's a setting option for it, but it's bugged.) I tried some of the fixes in the steam discussions, but none worked for me so I ended up playing in windowed the whole time.
No Backlog/History/Back Button support so if you miss what a character said due to the occasional miss tap/click you will have to reload a save. It also makes skipping already seen text on future playthroughs more annoying due not being able to look at the current conversation before choosing between options.
The game does have Mobile store ports that are baseline cheaper, but Steam sales usually will make it cheaper here.