Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent review

Elevated by real-time strategy battles where crowds of papercraft-style units fight it out, Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent is an otherwise ordinary role-playing effort. Some will undoubtedly find enjoyment in that.

Gamers are a fickle group. While we clamor for innovation, we also tend to support the familiar. Japanese developer Acquire tends to inject a bit of novelty while simultaneously leaning on familiar genres. While Akiba’s Trip: Undead & Undressed was fundamentally a brawler, the game’s storyline and setting were far more fleshed out than most of its pugilistic peers. Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault was even more ambitious, combining city simulation with tower defense mechanics. Clearly, there are some creative minds working for the Chiyoda-based studio.

A spin-off of Acquire’s Class of Heroes franchise, Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent’s combat takes place on gridded battlefields. But unlike most role-playing games, skirmishes resemble a real-time strategy game, with your units largely acting autonomously. It’s not a faultless mechanic and you’ll frequently pause to reposition idle party members and cast spells, but it’s a refreshing departure from the typical turn-based interpretation of conflict.

Delve into the recent Switch and PlayStation 4 release (the Japanese language PC version that was released last September receives an English localization), and you’ll encounter many of the recognizable constituents of a role-playing game. An opening cinematic introduces the cast while lyrics summarize the game’s premise, all while a completely infectious opening theme sets an energetic tempo.

Disappointingly, the visual novel-style storytelling that follows conveys a pretty pedestrian plotline. Following the unexplained disappearance of Obsidian High’s headmaster, the school experiences an onslaught of monster attacks, putting the entire student body in jeopardy. Fortunately, the respected leader left an artifact known as The Royal Orb with his son Alex, with the sphere capable of magically summoning students into battle. Unsurprisingly, Alex sets out to find his father, while also scouring the continent of Pedra for answers that can help quell the calamity.

The protagonist doesn’t have to do it alone and soon receives the help of childhood friend Citrin as well as introverted school counselor Lazuli. While they are spirited characters each seemingly vying for Alex’s attention, Adventure Academia restricts them to providing student upgrades. Although they help drive the exposition between outings, I wanted each of them to play a larger role in Alex’s aspirations. Additionally, the dialog isn’t consistently engaging. Sporadically, the game recycles puns that weren’t all that original.

But novelty emerges once you take the field. Here, Alex isn’t able to take down targets, fight enemies, or confront bosses directly. Instead, you’ll use your Royal Orb to summon hapless pupils to do the scrapping for you. Most of your orders, from temporarily leveling up Alex or your student skirmishers require mana, which is pulled from a persistently regenerating pool. Although you might take a brief break on the battlefield to save up enough of the resource to activate a promotion, each expedition is timed.

In execution, your trek through a snaking playfield ion advanced by moving Alex, with your subordinates following and usually automatically attacking foes or targets. Occasionally, you’ll have to move party members on switches to activate them or rearrange ranged combatants around so they ‘see’ their targets You’ll also be able to pause the game to activate spells, which offer abilities like party buffs, healing, or area-or-effect attacks. Naturally, this pulls from your mana supply, so you’ll have to prioritize your goals.

While the first couple of outings might seem simplistic, subsequent trips increase the complexity. While augmenting a pacifistic Alex might not seem worthwhile, upgrades increase the size of his mana pool and speed up the regeneration rate. Pleasingly, when a party member loses all of their health, they aren’t completely done in for it. After a brief pause, you can spend mana to resurrect them, although the unit forfeit’s a level. Given that foes can fill up the section of the battlefield and repeatedly respawn, combat can descend into a war of attribution, especially if your pupils aren’t powered up.

Pleasingly, Adventure Academia gives an ample amount of flexibility when it comes to party composition. For the game’s ten different unit types, race and class are indistinguishable, so elves always serve as archers while dwarves are restricted to being melee units. While you’re able to select from male and female appearances, you have no control over the three randomly assigned variables, which ascribe enigmatic but amusing attributes like “big sister”, “reasonable”, or “fujoshi”.

Initially, performing basic tasks like upgrading equipment or expanding your summon party can be imprecise given the organization of the menu system. But you’ll gradually learn how to accomplish tasks like registering your pupils for different courses, shopping for six categories of items, or assigning homework. And yes, you’ll probably need to occasionally grind, which gives units experience and earns currency as well as SP, the resource for academic enrichment.

The Fractured Continent’s plot might be underdeveloped and its menus are jumbled. But the RTS-style combat feels inventive, at least when combined with visual novel-style storytelling. While the game probably won’t go down in the archives of JRPG greats, it’s certainly serviceable, providing at least 25 hours of engagement.

Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent was played
on Switch with review code provided by the publisher.