Review Academagia - The Making of Mages Review

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Academagia

<p><strong>Academagia: The Making of Mages</strong> is a whimsical fantasy life simulation and role-playing game created by <a href="http://www.academagia.com/" target="_blank">Black Chicken Studios</a>. Darth Roxor decided to have a look at it and now he shares his experience with us.</p>
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<p>Negative relationships are pretty interesting. Some students will hate you &lsquo;just because&rsquo;, but you can just as well make them grow to hate you through your mischievous actions. Slandering someone, using offensive magic, will all lower your relationships with people. This can lead to a couple of fun things, as they shall often try to retaliate, spreading foul rumours about you among students, trying to put you into detention, sabotaging your actions, etc.</p>
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<p>When your mutual hatred with a certain character reaches the epicentre, you may actually even be called to a magic duel. If you&rsquo;ve really grown sick of someone, there you can go as far as unleashing eleven barrels of magic to put them into the infirmary right when they are supposed to take an exam. Through the usage of even more illegal magic, you may even attempt to gain control of your enemy, and have him do your bidding as a mindless puppet. Being an asshole has never been so amusing!</p>
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[Jaesun]

Excellent review Darth Roxor.

 

[Catalina]

Oh, good. I really like this game. I hope the review'll get more people to try it!

 

[Phelot]

Is this like Princess Maker only not sick and weird?

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Is this like Princess Maker only not sick and weird?

would you have preferred Prince Maker instead

 

[Phelot]

Is this like Princess Maker only not sick and weird?

would you have preferred Prince Maker instead

No, I happen to be a fan of PM though I can still recognize it as being sick and weird.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

No, I happen to be a fan of PM though I can still recognize it as being sick and weird.

bs without my paternal love she would not have killed the god of war all by herself

 

[pipka]

Patch version 38, 9 free DLCs, no DRM. Mod tools available for your wicked perusal.

Inquiry: Is it worth 17,53€ or 24,95$?

 

[Redshirt #42]

I actually swallowed my pride and tried it once.

It crashed on startup.

 

[Gwendo]

I bought the game last year and I regret it.

There's a text glitch, which forces me to change a setting of my windows vista (related to font dpi), which is a pain in the ass everytime I wanted to play the game.

Then, the text is too small, the screen area is underused. There's lot of skills, abilities, features that you have to choose in the begginig that you don't have the slightest idea what are they for and what's their impact in the gameplay.

Buy the time I reached the gameplay part, I was already fed up.

 

[Catalina]

Patch version 38, 9 free DLCs, no DRM. Mod tools available for your wicked perusal.

Inquiry: Is it worth 17,53€ or 24,95$?

Do you like reading, looking at stats, and using your imagination? Basically, do you like reading books and wish they were more interactive? Then, yes, the price is a bit high, but worth it.

Otherwise, no. It's priced very high, and the majority of the game is done through text. Personally, I'd say that since there's no demo, try it first, then decide if it's worth paying for. That's what I did personally, and ended up buying a copy, which I don't regret spending that price for.

 

[1eyedking]

FFS

 

[Johannes]

They just don't make princesses like they used to these days.

 

[deuxhero]

Princess Maker 3 had yuri endings last I checked. This only lets you make passes at the opposite sex.

 

[laclongquan]

It use bloody huge lot of data/stat that the later into the game, the more resources it swallow. Basically, the game track too many stats that it run sluggish. Then again, my PC is 2 generation behind (dualcore1.8) so maybe you will have better luck.

It got good replayability though.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The review doesn't state I've written it. Now I won't be able to wave my e-dick.

For shame!

 

[Crooked Bee]

Thanks for the review, DR! I too found the game interesting but highly tedious. Shame, really, it had a lot of promise.

Guess I will have to keep waiting for that proper Darklands sequel then. Sigh...

Indeed. :/

 

[Catalina]

I tried out Darklands about 8 or 10 years ago, but was too lazy to figure out how it actually worked, both technically and gameplay-wise. Maybe I'll take a second look.

Princess Maker 3 had yuri endings last I checked. This only lets you make passes at the opposite sex.

That was 4. 3 is the one where you have a purple-haired fairy that wants to be a princess.

On a completely unrelated note, Princess Maker 2 was the only one released in English, but Princess Makers 4 & 5 can be played with a Japanese text hooking program and automatic translator.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Bullshit visual choose your sex scene novels and retarded dungeon rape simulators get translated and PM3 onwards are ignored

 

[Crooked Bee]

Let's just hope Age of Decadence will be the Darklands spiritual successor we've all been waiting for.

Also, apart from the grinding, another thing that irritated me in Academagia -- and Darth also mentions it in his review -- is poor skill balance. There must be, I think, some randomness to it, but in my (one and only) playthrough many of the skills I invested in turned out to be almost worthless, like the dialectics or sleuthing skills. Darth says he mostly faced climbing, lockpicking, and bullying checks; in my case, the most frequent skill checks were those for observation, conversation, persuasion, hide, and acrobatics. So I just I started grinding them a couple of hours in, and things started to go pretty well for my character. Ideally, of course, every well thought out build should have means of dealing with a situation, but apparently that was too much for the Academagia developers to handle.

One thing I really liked, though, is the huge amount of text in this game. You wouldn't tell it from the games I'm LPing, but I totally LOVE the tl;dr kind of games. And Academagia is, in my view, for the most part surprisingly well-written. Overall, I really hope the game gets a sequel, but hopefully one that is more well-balanced.

 

[JaySn]

There must be, I think, some randomness to it, but in my (one and only) playthrough many of the skills I invested in turned out to be almost worthless

We've had similar experiences. I'm now on my third attempt and have come to the conclusion that the game conspires against us. it seems that no matter what skills I select, the encounters presented do not make use them.

I focus on negation (ect), I get a persuasion, bullying, and conversation check.
I focus on the magical arts, I get strength, luck, and compete checks.

every well thought out build should have means of dealing with a situation, but apparently that was too much for the Academagia developers to handle.

My Success for Higher Learning instructor would most likely agree with you, particularly if you included the phrase "If you believe your character can, then they will!"* I don't mind finding out that my negation 0, running 0, observation 0 character can't stop a rolling ball with magical wind, with a daring rush to catch it, and can't figure out where it originated. I do mind, however, that no opportunities to use the skills I've ground my character into offer a pay off, so far.

*a newsletter I do not subscribe to

 

[laclongquan]

Choose your Schools carefully. IF I remember correctly, teh static quest use certain skill checks but the random quest use checks that corresponding to your School Skills.

Around my 4th-5th runs do I really get the hang of it all.

 

[Crooked Bee]

every well thought out build should have means of dealing with a situation, but apparently that was too much for the Academagia developers to handle.

My Success for Higher Learning instructor would most likely agree with you, particularly if you included the phrase "If you believe your character can, then they will!"* I don't mind finding out that my negation 0, running 0, observation 0 character can't stop a rolling ball with magical wind, with a daring rush to catch it, and can't figure out where it originated. I do mind, however, that no opportunities to use the skills I've ground my character into offer a pay off, so far.

*a newsletter I do not subscribe to

Sorry, I phrased it incorrectly. I meant there must be enough/many/more situations in which your character build can use the abilities he or she specializes in. So yeah, I agree with you.

There were many situations, however, in which MORE skill checks would've been much appreciated, as I felt the developers didn't exhaust the options and didn't think the situation through thoroughly enough. In some situations, for example, influencing a person with your Logic/Dialectics skill would've certainly been a viable option, but the developers failed to include it.

Choose your Schools carefully. IF I remember correctly, teh static quest use certain skill checks but the random quest use checks that corresponding to your School Skills.

Well, I thought I chose my school pretty carefully based on my character's natural strengths and the school's description, but maybe my choice was just wrong. Anyway, thanks for the tip.

 

[Fowyr]

I remember some skill checks in adventures was very high. 13 or 15 Flawless timing and so on.

 

[Lightknight]

Is this like Princess Maker only not sick and weird?

More like King of Dragon Pass, i guess ? Princess Maker has some action in it.