Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent Review – Should Have Stayed in School

I’ve never tried Class of Heroes before. I knew about it, and it’s always piqued my interest but I’ve always had something else to play and I would just…forget about it. So, I was interested in Adventure Academia as it had the same ethos as Class of Heroes in a new battle style. There was no way I could pass up the chance to review this title.

The Way of the World

The story of Adventure Academy: The Fractured Continent starts with Alex, who just learned that he has inherited the Ruler Orb, a relic that allows the user to summon and command those to the whim of the user.

Certain that this means something has happened to his father, Alex decides that it’s time to set off and try to find and save his lost dad. Joining him on this quest is lazy researcher Lazuli and his childhood friend Citrin all but ensuring that hijinks will ensue.

The story never really evolves outside of what you would expect. Alex is a kinda bog standard anime protagonist and the two side characters that players will see the most, Lazuli and Citrin, don’t impact the story. I frequently wondered why Citrin even wanted to come on this adventure as she didn’t add anything especially in the beginning of the journey.

As for Lazuli, it took me a minute to even remember her name, and I, in fact, needed to go look it up to make sure that I was correct. The same thing happened with the Ruler Orb as outside of the opening, it feels like the characters rarely talk about it directly. Instead, each of the characters fawn over Alex and his skill over the orb and he just acts humble saying it’s all thanks to said orb.

Nothing really surprised me within the story but I was able to get some enjoyment when I started to treat it as an anime. The dialogue can get cheesy with lots of nods to various tropes like tsundere and otaku. Despite this it isn’t all bad but can get rather forgettable when I wasn’t actively playing the game.

Gotta Line Up the Stars

Combat in Adventure Academia isn’t complicated. Players will need to recruit students from the school that Alex attends. These characters have no personality and are instead just around for combat scenarios, being defined by their race. Humans are support tanks, while fairies are healers with little leeway for changing how these characters play.

For example, when I used a fairy character she refused to move from her spot only healing when somebody took damage near her. These restrictions feel arbitrary after all in other RPGs; being a healer doesn’t mean that the character can’t attack others. Even humans who have a buff must be used with mana that Alex generates and they will just attack.

This means that battles are more or less always on auto as players can only control where to drop their party members within a 9×9 area around Alex, as well as when to tell them to use their abilities. Alex himself is a sitting duck as the only lose condition is if he falls in battle. If this happens the game asks if players would like to restart the battle or to retreat to power up your allies.

This can make some battles frustrating as there is little to control outside of where characters are going to stand before combat begins. The good thing about this is that when a party member gets knocked out they will only suffer a small penalty and revive again soon. 

The worst part about this more inactive real time battle system is that grinding for levels means you have to keep replaying the same stage, and there’s no ways to speed up that grind, such as a fast-forward mode.

Grinding Should be Better Than This

So, I will admit that I am not fully invested in grinding. It feels like a way to make a game feel longer or harder than it really is. The worst part about Adventure Academia is that grinding feels so boring as Experience Points aren’t based on the kills done during the adventure, instead players receive a baseline for each adventure completed.

This means that if an adventure takes five minutes to complete and only rewards two hundred experience points, then that’s it. There is no real way to increase the yield by killing more enemies inside of that adventure. This is exasperated by the fact that levels between stages can vary by up to five levels that the game recommends. 

So, a team that was just fine for the previous encounter might just be severely underleveled for the very next fight. These levels can be augmented slightly by having good equipment and enough studying in their respective class but these also rely on grinding in these adventures and unlike gold, the SP needed to study in a class can’t be gained by selling useless items.

This single point is probably the worst part of Adventure Academia because there is nothing that can be done to alleviate it and the combat isn’t interesting enough to replay already beaten scenarios. Instead I found myself sighing upon having to repeat a scenario only a few times. 

A scenario dedicated to leveling up could alleviate this problem but it wouldn’t help the core of the problem being that the combat isn’t that interesting.

What Does It All Mean?

Somewhere hiding inside Adventure Academia is a good game, after all, in my initial few hours the game felt exciting and new with an intriguing spin on the strategy genre. It wasn’t until I had been tasked with grinding and spending extra time in small and uninteresting stages did the issues start to make themselves noticeable.

However, this doesn’t mean that it’s unredeemable in its current state. There is still enough to enjoy and the lower stakes battle system is great in small bursts which is how I enjoyed the game the most. I would boot up to play for around an hour a day and then put it down. The story also encourages this as any stage can be replayed along with the relevant story sections.

I can’t recommend Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent to everybody, and especially not to binge the game. But there is enough here that a casual SRPG fan might be inclined to spend a few hours a day with slowly burning through the story. If that sounds interesting to you then Adventure Academia might just be up your alley.