ACE Academy
Wow. So, this one came in as a complete surprise. I didnt expect much when i bought it, but boy was I wrong.
TL;DR:
Pros:
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Intriguing Story
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Good, genuinly funny writing
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Tons of choices, that also have an impact
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Unique and likeable characters
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Fully voice-acted
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Decent length
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Nice Artstyle & Soundtrack
Cons:
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Abrupt, unsatisfying ending
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Minor: Artwork occasionally gets re-used
In Detail:
Pixelfade. Never heard of that Developer before, nor about the game itself. So I expected a pretty run-of-the-mill Visual Novel…This was not what I got.
– Real player with 61.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure JRPG Games.
Do I recommend it, even though this is only the first episode? Yes I do.
The scores below are from 1 to 10, 1 being terrible, 5 being average and 10 being excellent. I am confident in this Visual Novel and I think it can be one of the best Western Visual Novels. Keep in mind that the scale I am using is the same that I use to evaluate japanese visual novels (like Grisaia no Kajitsu):
Story: Not rated at the moment (episode 1)
Since this is only the first episode and was pretty much about introductions (and there’s still another girl to be introduced in the next episode), I can’t rate the story. My personal thoughts are that this is going to be a straightforward comedy slice of life romantic visual novel, so I don’t expect any serious developments or mind blows.
– Real player with 28.4 hrs in game
Crystalline
Most of you reading this have probably never heard of PixelFade. They’re a small company, who have only produced two visual novels so far. ACE Academy, and now Crystalline. I have read through many VN’s from many developers, yet PixelFade has shown themselves to be the best. Both games are extraordinary, but Crystalline in particular is an experience. It’s currently taken the position of my favourite Visual Novel ever, and I seriously doubt it will be topped (until hopefully, PixelFade’s next game).
– Real player with 45.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure JRPG Games.
Well, I’m glad I took the time to read this after I finished Kaori’s After Story. This visual novel has been quite a journey… Quite literally, I suppose.
MC finds himself nodding off in the middle of studying. When he wakes up, he finds himself on a grassfield of an entirely different world called Terra. There he comes across Leanna, a Mage-Knight investigating a strange energy activity that’s happened recently, which she then links to the MC. Leanna offers to help the MC to fit in Terra and also takes him to the Mage Academy to check in on this energy phenomenon. Eventually it becomes a story to try and get our beloved MC back home. Along the way, the rather mysterious mercenary Zack, the studious Mage-Caster Amelia, and the charming treasure hunter Kara all join the party to help out in this process.
– Real player with 38.8 hrs in game
Ambition: A Minuet in Power
I almost fainted when I saw Ambition’s premise. A choose-your-own adventure? With political intrigue and love interests?! Taking place in the French Revolution!? It seemed perfect for me - and, oh, it was!
You play as Yvette Decaux, a woman who travels to Paris on the eve of the French Revolution to rendezvous with her fiance, a baron named Armand. But oh no! He’s missing! You have the option to try and find him, and/or abandon him for one or more of the five other love interests. Each of those love interests are part of a faction - the Crown, the Church, the Military, the Bourgeoisie, and the Revolution. To build your power, you must go to parties thrown by these factions to meet your romance options, collect gossip, and participate in a randomized and vast array of entertaining minor intrigues. The gossip you get can be sold for money (used to buy dresses, pay rent, bribe the authorities, and purchase coffee - the usual!) or bend the factions to your will. You can increase or decrease their power, or nudge the middle factions towards the Crown or Revolution.
– Real player with 146.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Visual Novel Games.
First and foremost: this game gets my recommendation. Its content is deep, compelling, and interesting. Despite having limited hours to do so, I wanted to keep playing. The historical perspective seems incredibly well researched and founded (though I admit I am not a good source to weigh in on historical legitimacy), the characters were diverse, and the story was compelling.
That being said, I found numerous issues. The most frustrating being that many of the randomly generated interactions kept appearing “out of order” in such a way that the story felt massively interrupted and disjointed. I’m honestly not sure if it’s some strange series of choices I made to cause this, but I kept accidentally running into one of the main characters in the game in side missions at parties in which she would act as if we had some very contemptuous history, when in reality, I had never even seen her before let alone (to my knowledge) upset her before. As I found from playing the entire game, I believe she was destined to be an adversary, but I was SO confused when I was playing. There were several other instances in which I found that interactions I had already had with characters didn’t jive with interactions I went on to have with them subsequently, and honestly, this is my biggest issue with the game.
– Real player with 48.2 hrs in game
Battle Girls
A short, mecha fighting story with some romance options brought to you by the Dharker Studios.
You were chosen as a mecha pilot to represent your nation in an international competition. Just to be clear, there is no mecha action here, it’s pure VN. You have several battles to go through and multiple choices to reach one of many endings. While the VN is relatively short, to complete all scenarios will likely double the length so it’s not bad. Your choice will also influence if and who will you end up with. Writing quality is acceptable but there is not enough character development here. No real heroines' backgrounds or motivations present. Also, the main character was left as a blank slate, no sprite, no face, little to none personality. There are some slip ups and inconsistencies, e.g. wrong names used or story referring to events that did not occur due to the previous choices. Still, I enjoyed it more than expected from low budget VNs. One of better VNs from this developer.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
So some background. I’m a FPS and RPG kinda person, but have played various other genres. My first visual novel was Doki Doki Literature Club, and it changed my life (good game, check it out it’s free). So when I was making a badge and got a coupon for this game, it peaked my interests.
However, instead of being just some cheap game with no depth, I was surprised to see how much depth this game’s story went into. I will admit, I don’t get the whole thing about it being a school or something, and yet they are battling other countries so they get an untrained dude to fight for them. But whatever….
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
My Sweet Confession
It’s a cute, short, visual novel, with full voice acting!
Ichika is quite the dunce, but she’s trying her best.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Pretty art, actually good dubbing and solid playtime for $0.5 (on sale) is definitely worth it.
Things to remember before playing this game:
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it is full of bugs
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do not change the font size or the in-game menu will disappear
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each time you turn on the game set the volume because it will be reset
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turn off sound effects, they’re annoying
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set voice to low since the dubbing can have uneven sound levels
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don’t use “auto”, it will skip some of the dubbing
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don’t press spacebar in the main menu
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
Once Upon an Electric Dream
I enjoyed the game, the voice acting is pretty good for such a small game and the story flows well.
There are a few typo’s, but the writing is still well done, not something one can say about all short visual novels.
It has all the functions of normal visual novels, saving, loading, skipping unread text so all in all well put together.
The story in itself is heart-felt as described, and again the voice acting really brings Miel and Zero alive.
There are no Steam achievements, but played through till I got all the CG’s.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
I got through both true endings, 1 good ending, and 2 bad endings in 84 minutes. There are two love interests. Zero was a sweet feeling and the second, Miel, had a good ending that made me feel a little uncomfortable. It just didn’t seem to be a relationship based on honesty although it was mostly the MC’s fault for being stubborn enough to just go after the guy a bit randomly without all the info. MC is definitely impulsive. the true ending of Miel’s route was better, but also seemed a bit off regarding how much MC sacrificed only to abandon the cause at the last moment.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
Super Web Kittens: Act I
Going into this I didn’t have high expectation for a game like this, I mean come on you can’t blame me with a video like that and the whole game being based around cats (And dogs). I decided to bite the bullet and drop the $5 and started the download, After the download finished I started the game and started playing, After about at most an hour I finished the chapter and I can say both the story and premise of the game was both engaging and interesting. The dialogue between characters was both entertaining and interesting, Honestly the only thing I don’t like about this game is the grammar errors every few dialogue boxes. (Sorta ironic as my grammar isn’t good either) But I honestly can forgive that for a Act 2!
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Press E, read story, that’s about it. The Cat’s are cute. Glad I only paid .99 for this game.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Ethereal Enigma
PixelFade’s VNs for a while now achieve absolute hights when it goes to production quality while struggling a bit when it goes to writing. Ethereal Enigma is basically a culmination of that trend, which means you’ll likely either love it or hate it, depending on how much substance you want from your story and how much whimsical slice-of-life content can you stomach.
For me, EE was ultimately more enjoyable than this studio’s previous game, Crystalline, as it didn’t try to be anything more than a straightforward waifu game, but it also has its share of issues. Erilynn, the princess from another world, is not a bad character, but her route is very hit-and-miss and lacks a strong theme. The whole story is theoretically about her being stranded in our world and trying to find her way back, but it’s a really thin layer on top of fully-generic slice-of-life fluff – and some scenes with her are just awkward and fail to properly build up the romantic tension. The protagonist is the blankest of blank slates, which theoretically gives the player a lot of space to self-insert, but I wished he had something that made him stand out – Ace Academy, studio’s debut title, reached a really good balance in this regard, as the lead there had a tragic backstory and a few quirks that defined him to a decent degree, while also leaving a lot of space for player agency. Here, there’s simply nothing that makes the protagonist feel like an actual person. Also, there’s barely any justification for the story being set in a Japanese high-school – it feels like if the developers were actively trying to make their game look generic and uninspired. And, as the last complaint, the sexual humour in this game is nearly universally awful and I died inside a little during each of the few scenes completely based around crude innuendos.
– Real player with 49.8 hrs in game
So I’ve completed all of PixelFade’s games so far. And as always, I wanted to share my thoughts on the game I’ve just finished.
Pros:
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Great visuals, both BGs and CGs are meticulously designed, polished and beautiful. Live2D technology makes the game more vivid.
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The characters are elaborately built, from appearance to personality. Each one of the characters is unique and interesting. This proves that the important thing is not how many characters you throw into your game, but that each character has to be well designed. Quality over quantity.
– Real player with 35.5 hrs in game
Kaori After Story
It has been eluded to in other reviews, but let me preface my review by saying that it’s almost impossible for you to get the whole effect of this VN if you don’t read Ace Academy first. There’s a lot of references that you can’t just get from context clues or brief discussions. In fact, since I completed Kaori’s route months ago, even I had to really think back to all that happened in that arc to make sure I understood everything the MC was talking about.
I must admit, when I played Ace Academy, I felt rather unsatisfied by how it ends, at least as it relates to the main plot of the story. I’m not sure if PixelFade is planning on making an AA2, but it was left sort of open-ended, and I’m not the biggest fan of those kinds endings. With that said…Kaori After Story was AWESOME! It bookends the Kaori route amazingly, and it really helps sell the permanency of their relationship. The dialogue and the conversation trees are vastly improved from AA, and feel much more natural. Hell, I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit that towards the end, I had some serious feels. The artwork here has also improved drastically. I must be part psychic, because I had pictured what an Ace character would look in the engine PixelFade used for Crystaline. Not only did the devs actually give me such a scenario in real life, but it looks almost exactly how I pictured it in my head, and it looks great. Kaori’s redesign for the new game engine is adorable, mainly because they’ve made her features much softer in this iteration. Given that she’s a Tsundere, having softer features makes it easier to believe that she has the capacity to be gentle and kind. Although there were some custom screenshots in AA that showed her appearing tender/lighthearted, and they looked fine, but not as good as she looks here overall.
– Real player with 24.3 hrs in game
PixelFade did it again. I absolutely loved Ace Academy it is one of my top visual novels. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that they made an after story for the ace academy story and super excited when I saw that it was of my favourite route as well. Instantly bought the game (had to replay ace but didn’t mind that) and I am so pleased with it
The story is sweet and romantic. The characters are likeable and fun, And Ofcourse Kaori is the same firey red head she always is, I am very glad to see that PixelFade is still working on ace stories. This visual novel was very well written and of course the character is awesome I mean who doesn’t love a tsundere?
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game
Kiss/OFF
The Xargazorg Collective proudly presents Kiss/OFF, the hottest dating show in the galaxy! The contestants have exactly three days to pair off and SQUARE OFF in a dating royale! Whichever couple has the most passionate, magical kiss at the end of the contest wins the Ultimate Prize: Freedom! The losing team? They get yeeted right into the sun. :)
♥ MEET VIC ♥
Play as Vic Powers, your everyday college track star who is cool and chill and very bi. When he gets abducted onto the set of Kiss/OFF, he suddenly has a lot more to worry about than declaring his major. Now, he’s got to kiss a hottie, win the dating game, and find some way back to Earth!
♥ DATE OR HATE?! ♥
Unlock totally different endings based on whether or not your Kiss/OFF partner LOVES or HATES Vic. Go for true romance, or try to drive your partner crazy—but always remember that actions can have big, big consequences.
♥ MEET HOT ALIEN SINGLES IN YOUR AREA ♥
Space Hero Kel, Robo-Risq, and Desert Wanderer Arturo are just a few of the contestants who have been Involuntarily Volunteered™ to take part in the galaxy’s hottest gameshow! Match-up with everybody onboard and learn their secrets!
♥ EVERYBODY GETS TO DATE! ♥
Whoever you DON’T pick as your partner will team up and compete against you. Get the chance to see how the other characters get along when you’re not in the room.
♥ ALWAYS ANOTHER EPISODE… ♥
Finish one episode, and immediately start binging another! THRILL as you discover that literally everything is different on the second playthrough! GASP as you slowly reveal more secrets of The Ship! GRUNT as you consider the possibility that Interstellar (2014) although a critical darling, was perhaps a tad overrated at the time!
♥ MYSTERIES AND TWIST…ERIES ♥
Unravel the riddle of The Ship, the alien audience, and your alien host with the alien most: Xargazorg. Every playthrough and every route gets you one step closer to escape!
♥ FURTHER FUNTASTICAL FEATURES ♥
150,000+ Words!
20 Unique Endings! (With Achievements! Bing!)
A fully-original soundtrack with over 15 sick beats!
6 hours of unique story content!
1 super-secret true ending!
1 very hot girl who is part robot but also super mean and basically evil!
