Gender: Male
Location: The End

Definately not Harry Potter!

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Academagia is a “life simulation” game, which puts it in the same genre as Princess Maker and Legend of Wulin Heroes. Essentially, the player controls the schedule of the main character, and depending on which choices are made and whether they succeed or fail, different attributes may rise or fall and the character develops one way or another. In Academagia, the main character is a young wizard who has come to the titular school to learn the ways of magic.

Academagia takes more of its cues from the rest of surprisingly extensive “wizard school” sub-genre than it takes from Harry Potter. For instance, the game take place in the more traditional high-magic quasi-medieval setting, as opposed to Potter’s modern day, plus the writing doesn’t take itself terribly seriously. I get the feeling that the elements taken from Rowling were more to capitalize on her fanbase than to rip her off entirely. And the main character is certainly not bound by fate to Magic Snake Hitler, so there's definitely that.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the game itself. Being an indie game, Academagia can be pretty rough around the edges. The coding isn’t terribly optimized, the writing can bug out from time to time, there’s only a few dozen environmental pictures in the whole game, and you’ll be staring at the same basic interface from start to finish. Still, the writing is fairly solid, and given that it’s the primary medium of the game, solid writing is incredibly important.

However, and most importantly, what stands as simultaneously the greatest strength and greatest weakness of Academagia is the sheer volume of options available to you. Seven attributes, seven colleges, seventeen classes, and twenty seven familiars! Dozens of character backgrounds! Hundreds of skills, hundreds of things to do in a day, hundreds of spell options, thousands of lore entries! Just as an example, Diplomacy, Persuasion, Oratory, Negotiate, Manipulation, Bluff, and Lie are all separate and unrelated skills. To make things even worse/better, the developer team is constantly releasing free DLC to add even more skills, adventures, and content into the game. I believe they are up to 14 as of this writing, and there is no sign of slowing down. And you know the craziest part? The game only covers the first year out of five.

The Official website can be found here. You can also buy the game there as well. Though I recommend spending some time getting familiar with the game before buying. The sheer scale of the game and all the options make it pretty hard to understand and get to grips with. So read some guides or watch some tutorials on youtube first. But other than that, the games amazing and very addictive.


Wiki can be found here.

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Last edited by Nephthys on Feb 28th, 2012 at 11:16 PM

Gender: Male
Location: Sanctum of Innocence

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And from the ashes he rose, like a black cloud. The Sin of one became the Sin of many.

Gender: Male
Location: The End

H-bombs solve everything.

The game can also be brought here for $10 less than on the official website. Also a handy walkthrough and explanation of the game mechanics.

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