Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent’s issues earn it an average grade.

Nowadays, more than ever, I find myself taking chances on impulse buys. That’s the familiar story with Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent. Featuring a smiling hero with a staff adorned with a massive orb and surrounded by various classic-looking characters ranging in design, I thought that this was another RPG that snuck under my radar. It was. Sadly, it was probably for the better that it did until now. I tend to have pretty good luck with impulse buys. So, is Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent a one-time fluke? It’s hard to say, but it is a game that I should have looked up. Its biggest issue is that it has a lot of tiny, small issues that amalgamate into the big picture.

Adventure Academia is a spinoff of Class of Heroes, a series that often gets compared to the classically difficult dungeon crawling series Etrian Odyssey. Taking place on the continent of Petra, you take the role of Alex (the swindler on the cover I talked about that lead me to the impulse buy). His father has been on a quest to investigate magical orbs that are causing monsters to overrun the continent. Alex has an orb himself: The Ruler Orb. Using this as a beacon, he is on a cross-continental journey to seek both the orbs and his old man. It’s a simple story with a simple premise that I appreciated. There aren’t many deep or impactful moments. Your party consists of characters you create yourself. It’s basic stuff.

It was initially easy for me to get attached to these created characters. This is one area where the game shines because there’s a noteworthy number of classes and designs. As is typical, you’ll want an idea of what you want your party to look like. Adding new characters is easy, but they always start at level one. There’s a lot to do with them before they’re off to battle. They have equipment to manage, skills to learn, and in keeping with the theme of academia, each character attends a course. Courses are the game’s version of skill paths. There’s a lot of course options, too. Sadly, the number of points (SP) to “graduate” from a course with a batch of new skills is high. Griding a course to completion feels more frustrating than fun. That rewarding feeling of moving a character through the ranks and getting them customized isn’t here.

Combat is…certainly something. It can be both addictive and aggravating all at once. Sadly, it’s where most of my time was spent. Adventure Academia is a grid-based strategy RPG at the core. The goal is to move from one section of the map to a marked enemy or target within a time limit. Alex will arrive to the field solo, and you need to bring out his friends one at a time. As the clock ticks down, Alex’s magic (MP) goes up. High MP means you can add more characters to the field and give them a Rank Up. Improving their ranking gives them a boost in overall power. Despite all of this, one minor yet annoying feature persists. In combat, you don’t control your characters. Instead, you move a beacon towards where you want them to head. The team follows a path towards the beacon while fighting enemies and using their unique skills along the way. You’re able to pick up and move characters at any time. It’s seemed simple in theory. The issue is that battlefields get busy from every angle. Stuff is happening all over the place. Keeping track of it all while making sure Alex stays alive and monitoring the clock takes getting used to. Replaying the early battles a few times helped with learning the busyness. Level grinding is a necessity since boss battles always give a massive difficulty spike.

The artwork is lovely. It reminds me of mid aughts anime that I used to watch. Characters have only one pose, but with multiple facial expressions. The variety of characters, both stock and story, is impressive. Japanese voice acting gives them extra personality. Music is standard, lighthearted RPG flavor. Combat is where the graphics keep up with the theme of the game being all over the place. There are mini character representations. There are Domokun sprites that represent enemies. There are anime cut-ins that remind me of the Tales of series’ Mystic Artes. There’s a lot of smoke and the letters “KO” flashing across the screen. Again, it’s quite busy, especially during the boss battles. I think I was only an hour in before my eyes learned where to focus.

I didn’t last long in Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent after giving it the old college try. It took me about 10 hours to realize that the bizarre combination of weird gameplay features wasn’t for me. It’s hard to say how much longer I had to go, but I’m guessing that this is a standard, 30-to-40-hour campaign. The variety with different classes and races adds a level of replay ability, but as you can probably tell, it’s not enough to warrant another try – much less finishing an initial run. It’s not like this is a bad game; I’m confident someone will embrace its quirks and look at them as charming. I’m just not one of those gamers.

Overall, 5/10: Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent was a lot of things rolled into one. Its “fun” aspect didn’t last long enough to keep my interest.