Sunrider Academy

For me, this game was something of a disappointment. It's more "gamey" than most visual novels, requiring you to complete tasks and improve skills as you progress through the game, which I found annoying and felt detracted from the character arcs. The actual character arcs are pretty good, at least the few that I finished before I abandoned this game for other, more traditional visual novels.

The play order I followed was one I saw recommended, and it worked well, so I do recommend going MoA > Academy > LD. Academy is an unfortunate mix of overdone mechanics over a short, but actually very good romance visual novel. The problem is that the good parts are HEAVILY outweighed by the mechanical drudgery. Of my time clocked on Academy, only about 20-30% was truly engaging content. Now it was really engaging, and I loved it, but it was so broken up and disjointed by the mechanical side of the game that it killed any desire I had to drudge through a second play through. Worth one play through, and just make darn sure you focus on the girl you like most the first time, because you probably won't have the patience to get through the mechanics again. All the stars I've awarded to Academy are for the actual story/visual novel elements. The mechanics became entirely a negative by overstaying their welcome to an egregious degree. Academy would honestly be more worth the money if the mechanical elements were totally removed, and it was just a straight visual novel dating sim. Academy is simply too mired in mediocre mechanics, and would otherwise be very enjoyable. The whole series is enjoyable! But only MoA and end-half of LD really have any replay value due to other frustrations. Hope this helped! --Cy

I began Sunrider series with the Academy spin-off and it made me play all the other games too. Why so? Academy has its own problems with too long and routine simulator that makes people stop playing it before actual routes, but I actually liked it, that's quite relaxing. And ofc the main reason I became a huge fan was the novel part. Everything is drawn perfectly, my ideal drawing actually. Narrative and hentai are also perfectly matching together, everything stands on its place. Also music is something I'm in love is every Sunrider game. So it can be a bit boring in the beginning for somebody, but reaching your waifu's route makes you fall in love totally and play all the other games by Love in Space even if they are not such hentai.

I don't usually play dating sims, but this was 2 bucks. I don't think it's worth your time. I played through on the Sonya story line. Pretty boring, and essentially nothing happened. If your character wasn't in the game the NPC's would all have the same fate. You play for 9 months in the game. After month 3 would have been a better stopping point. After you get all the hearts up on the girls in the first couple months you just click through the same conversation with your sister for the next 6 months. Lame, do not recommend if you're playing for a game/story.