Now Playing: Artificial Academy

Whelp, I sure did soapbox all over the last post, didn't I? Well don't worry, this post will contain 0% soapboxing, because this post is about:

ARTIFICIAL ACADEMY

Ahem, so anyway, I recently downloaded Artificial Academy (yet another glorious game by Illusion), and boy am I having a blast. Sure, it might not have a story, or any real game play whatsoever, but that's besides the point. What makes this game awesome for me is the character maker. Which is what I've been mostly doing. So far I've created over thirty characters (the game allows you to "enroll" 25 of them in the academy).

Basically the game play is this: You choose a character to main, then run around talking to the other students. The "day" is broken up into four segments and the character can do group activities (such as studying, eating lunch, practicing for club activities, and walking home together) in order to build up friendships/relationships. There are other options such as "insult someone" or "pick a fight", so if you want to play a character that is a complete prick, this game allows you to do that too.

One thing I like about the game is that the characters all have wills of their own. It's not like Artificial Girl 3 where the girls just waited for the main character to show up and have sex with them. In AA the other characters form their own relationships (or their own enemies) and actually do stuff besides just stand around. For instance, I checked my roster and discovered that two of the male characters had fallen in love with each other. I was pretty thrilled to discover that because I had been certain that gay relationships would have to be done manually. Still sucks that there are no gay male sex scenes though. (the kissing/fondling/hugging options are available, but clicking the "let's have sex" button just causes the screen to fade to black)...the only thing giving me hope is the rumor that there will be an expansion/add-on that allows for gay male sex.

As I mentioned, the characters can form their own relationships, and depending on what traits they have, this can also lead to them having sex in the weirdest places. Like when my character was running to meet up with a friend, she passed by a couple having sex in the courtyard.

It's also a lot of fun to just observe the NPCs. You can usually tell which characters have hooked up, or are about to hook up, because they will always run off together to some not-so-secret location. I also observed a lot of fights. One of my characters, some pink-haired girl with the "casual" personality trait was getting her ass kicked on the roof while surrounded by a group of girls. I don't know if it was a glitch or what (the 'her constantly being beaten up' part, fighting is a pretty normal thing in the game), but it was certainly weird. 

 However, despite my love for the game, there are still some things that make me go all sadface. For one, the option to change their clothing has been taken out. In AG3 the player could choose what clothes the girls wear, but I guess that because this is a school setting, all the students have to wear uniforms. It still sucks though. Another thing that makes me sad, as mentioned earlier, is the lack of man-on-man sex scenes. I also wish that there were more places to visit. The girls make mention of going to a coffee shop or going shopping sometimes, so I think it would be nice if there had been an option to make them go to a mall or something (like how AG3 had the eerily empty little town area).

Oh, and another thing that makes me sad is the lack of customization for the males. First off, the males only get four body four body types (normal, tall, thin, and fat), and you can't customize their body like you can the females. Then they only get four personalities (soft (speaks in a soft girlish voice and is kind of like the male equivalent of the humble personality trait), eloquent (character is basically a friendly guy...I was expecting it to be snobbish or high class), violent (character basically acts like a self-absorbed jerk), and manly (character has a deep voice and tends to speak in short sentences like a caveman).

Still, I'm happy that the option to create males and allow them to form relationships was included, and hopefully it carries over into AG4.