ACE Academy Guide

 
Due to unforeseeable circumstances, the protagonist finds himself transferring to ACE Academy, a premier school for Cenorobotics studies in Japan. He struggles to find a team willing to accept him and his outdated “American” GEAR to compete in the intramural tournament. When compared to the sleek, robust, and advanced technologies of the Japanese counterparts, his search feels utterly hopeless. That is, until he finds a group of pilots just desperate enough for another member. This is where your story begins. ACE Academy is a comedy-centric, slice-of-life, visual novel with sci-fi and romance elements. With hundreds of choices available, you can experience the storyline and interact with characters in a much more personalized way. The only real time these things look good is in their own event graphics which are handled by a different artist. So a shout-out to the artist who managed to get some good shots in with the mechs. Other than that, I suppose the idea may have been to give the mech a ‘mass market’ feel since they are apparently widely available in this world, but this is a scenario that could have lent itself to some wildly creative mech designs that never come to pass. Again, the pretense is that many of these teams build their own mechs so instead of its vanilla designs, it should’ve looked more like G Gundam in terms of creativity and variety with everyone bringing their own inspirations to their mech.The soundtrack for Ace Academy is decent enough, although at times it did feel out of place and gave me more than a few flashbacks to Sonic Adventure. Most of the softer tracks used for the Slice-of-Life and romantic scenes work out okay, but the hard rock used for the mech battles falls flat more often than not and that’s because the writing can’t match the pace of the music. Credit does go to the vocal cast though who made even the more groan-inducing scenes easier to sit through.  There are some scenes where it’s clearly phoned in and just wood piling onto more wood, but the scenes where the actors pull it off are very well done. A special shout out goes to Tina Kim who voiced the Protagonist’s sister Nikki and Bradley Petyak who voiced Uncle Kaito.

Ace Academy is a Visual Novel made by western developer PixelFade Studio, that while maintaining the premise and culture of Visual Novels, bucks the trend of Visual Novels that focus on crafting a wonderful story to the detriment of the experience at a given moment.Ace Academy is set in the future year of 2049, a world where giant robots called GEAR have revolutionized the way people live to the point where they’re commonplace, even in many non-military applications. The protagonist (that the user can name) is an American student pilot who uses an old GEAR made by him and his dad, but due to circumstances (that aren’t revealed until late in the game), he and his sister transfer to the glorious Nippon Japan. Instead of going into a typical high school and living a typically boring life, however, our main character transfers into the prestigious Ace Academy that trains students to pilot GEARs, and throughout the game, we see him, disappointingly, live a typical high school life with a slight mecha twist.While one can tell from a plot summary that the story and premise contain mecha and sci-fi elements, what one may not get from them is that the majority of this game is a slice of life nothing more, nothing less and that can be a bit disappointing depending on who you are. While the story has a few interesting twists, such as mecha fights or a conspiracy surrounding our main character’s family, the story isn’t anything remarkable, and doesn’t do anything that goes beyond what one expects from an ordinary high school slice of life (with the occasional mecha). Although there are some aspects of the story like the backstories of certain characters that one can point to as being notable and engaging, the issue with the story really is that none of the developments make any meaningful difference in the terms of adding to one’s experience with the story: The characters don’t change in any meaningful way and the plot doesn’t develop far enough to provide any real gratification. Hell, even the main storyline about the main character and his GEAR doesn’t really go anywhere, because the story ends before that arch could develop into something cool and interesting. The only thing that truly stood out was the romance in the game, because of how natural it felt in comparison to all of the awkward romances we see constantly in VNs. In the end though, the story is nothing but average, becoming nothing more than the vehicle for character interactions.

While that view on the story may have sounded overly critical, ultimately, the actual plot of the game and the premise it’s based on don’t matter when playing Ace Academy, because it’s a game that focuses on the moment-to-moment experience first and foremost and the execution of the actual experience is so enjoyable that it overshadows the flaws of the story structure. There are only a few aspects of this game that truly bothered me (the time jumps and the ending being my main sticking points), but I still had a blast with the game regardless.Giving the writing a lot of lot of personality and charm goes a long way towards one’s enjoyment of a work. When reading Ace Academy, it becomes clear that the writers wanted you to have fun with their work: every line elicits enjoyment that one doesn’t usually expect out of a Visual Novel.Giving the writing a lot of lot of personality and charm goes a long way towards one’s enjoyment of a work. When reading Ace Academy, it becomes clear that the writers wanted you to have fun with their work: every line elicits enjoyment that one doesn’t usually expect out of a Visual Novel.They make for the best moments in Ace Academy and are the game’s defining attribute. The best part about these is they give off a sense that the developers are fans just like us: they not only understand the jokes that we would enjoy, but also the culture of the western gaming/Visual Novel/anime community much better than anyone in the East, and this makes it all the more enjoyable. There’s nothing like it in the market: I have yet to play a Visual Novel that truly understands and subverts the culture of the western market like Ace Academy. In its execution, it embraces the fact that it is a Visual Novel much more than anything I have read, and because of this, Ace Academy becomes truly great, a fantastic experience that I truly loved to play.

The only real time these things look good is in their own event graphics which are handled by a different artist. So a shout-out to the artist who managed to get some good shots in with the mechs. Other than that, I suppose the idea may have been to give the mech a ‘mass market’ feel since they are apparently widely available in this world, but this is a scenario that could have lent itself to some wildly creative mech designs that never come to pass. While one can tell from a plot summary that the story and premise contain mecha and sci-fi elements, what one may not get from them is that the majority of this game is a slice of life nothing more, nothing less and that can be a bit disappointing depending on who you are. While the story has a few interesting twists, such as mecha fights or a conspiracy surrounding our main character’s family. Credit does go to the vocal cast though who made even the more groan-inducing scenes easier to sit through.  There are some scenes where it’s clearly phoned in and just wood piling onto more wood, but the scenes where the actors pull it off are very well done. The character building isn’t always smooth as some scenes just assume you’ve hung out with one of the characters and doesn’t give the player any explanation as to what’s going on. The romantic relationships can also feel stunted at times as the team worked to include scenes ripped from anime without proper context and build up, or even a desire to execute.

Overall, Ace Academy is a unique and engaging Slice of Life Visual Novel that focuses on execution instead of story, one that understands its audience and makes the best out of it. I can definitely say that I had a blast with this game, and I highly recommend that you give it a shot. Just keep in mind that it’s rather different than most Visual Novels out there. Also, just as a side note, if you’re having issues with full screen on devices that have a high DPI, then make sure to go into the files and disable DPI scaling. I had that issue when playing the game, and disabling that option fixed it. The character building isn’t always smooth as some scenes just assume you’ve hung out with one of the characters and doesn’t give the player any explanation as to what’s going on. The romantic relationships can also feel stunted at times as the team worked to include scenes ripped from anime without proper context and build up, or even a desire to execute. Going back to my first run through with Valerie, one scene involves us going to a love hotel so that Valerie could book them in the Paris suite and imagine they’re both in France. Nothing is hinted to have happened and I’m fine with that, but it feels like they just wanted to shove a love hotel scene in there and it reminded me of the lack of imagination in the world building because if that’s all they wanted to do. One thing Ace Academy has going for it is that it’s a decent looking game.

The overall style is pure anime and the character designs aren’t going to shake the foundations of the creative world, but they are polished to a mirror shine and blend in perfectly with the vibrant backgrounds. Unfortunately, the presentation did bite off a bit more than it could chew on several fronts. Some backgrounds that are set outside just don’t get the polish of the others and just look bad in comparison to backgrounds set inside. Also, a lot of backgrounds are reused in the later game and shadow placeholders serve as a stand-in for any character not directly connected to our GMP’s circle. I know it doesn’t sound jarring but when the main entrance of your school also serves as the main entrance for a love hotel, it can be mood breaking. The event graphics, however, can be hit or miss. The biggest issue is that the same polish used to keep the sprites looking decent doesn’t hold up very well to detailed scrutiny. So if, for some reason, you wanted to have a close-up of a certain character in a CG it may not look quite as good as them just standing in front of the screen. This is seen very early on when you first run into Kaori whose outline is thicker and looks harsher in the close shot, but once you zoom out looks okay for the most part. It’s an interesting note I probably wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for repeatedly playing the game.