Review – Kraken Academy!! – A school like no other | Xbox One

Unveiled last year and demoed after The Game Awards 2021, Kraken Academy!! finally arrives on our PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox machines. The Berlin studio Happy Broccoli Games gives us its first title, with a slightly offbeat universe. We will be responsible for freeing spirits trapped in the bodies of certain students in order to save Kraken Academy. This establishment, which has been plagued by the Perfidious for several years, risks purely and simply disappearing if we do not intervene quickly.

The mad mad mad college

We begin the new school year at Kraken Academy as our mother drops us off. Our hero and his sister Nadia, pretentious and suffering from a very probable inferiority complex, each join a study club. Nadia integrates that of the theater, reserved for beautiful and rich students, while our avatar joins the music club, a priori dedicated to the little people, the plebs, the poor. At first glance, the high school looks rather disgusting, grimy and dull, but the atmosphere seems relatively good.

Welcome to Kraken Academy.

Screams start and a fight between a student from the art club and a tramp breaks out near our protagonist. A nearby car catches fire and the sports teacher intervenes in the melee to separate the two adversaries. Behind us then appears Broccoli Girl, a student transformed into a living vegetable who panics because she is late for her music lesson. Relatively enthusiastic, she notices our uniform, deduces that we belong to the same club and urges us to join the classroom as soon as possible. She also takes the opportunity to send us a “friend request” on Kraken-net, an internal social network at the academy.

The club portal being closed, we need an authentication card in order to join the course. Stix, a student from the theater club, posted not far from there, offers to provide us with the required pass, against 10,000 shlotinkis (game currency). A fight between a student and a homeless man, a broccoli girl, a racket to gain access to music class, the year starts well! Finally arrived in the classroom, we find that the teacher is also late. We take the opportunity to make presentations with the other students. Brocoli Girl is then delighted to learn that we play the keyboard. Simona, one of the members of the music group, always dressed as a giraffe and equivocally outspoken, tells us a dark rumor of an underling of the Kraken. At the end of the lesson, Broccoli Girl gives us a useful baseball bat to smash the lockers and garbage cans but we will come back to this.

The year is starting under the best auspices.

The Kraken summons us near the lake and tells us that a vile entity called The Perfidious wishes to destroy the Academy and that we are the chosen one to prevent it. He then sends us a corrupted relic, the amulet of the Kraken, which will allow us to travel in time and thus investigate the identity of the Perfidious. We learn that the plan of the big bad will be put into effect in three days, in a vision of destruction and ruin. We will have to travel in time in order to free the ancestral spirits of the different clubs, these time trips giving us precious clues about the investigation to be carried out.

A barred universe that saves limited gameplay

If the title partly takes up the time travel system that made the lifeblood of The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, unfortunately it has neither the flavor nor the stakes. In fact, we will mainly be responsible for finding objects at certain more or less precise times, and delivering them to a member of the academy at another time. The entire title only takes place over the first three days after the start of the school year, from Monday morning to Wednesday evening. We will then have the option of returning to the past using the Kraken amulet, or speeding up time by calling our mother at the phone booth in the courtyard. She will also take the opportunity to ask us if we have done our homework well, or if we are not bothering our classmates too much during recess.

The title takes place almost always according to the same process. We will break lockers or garbage containers allowing us to accumulate plastic bottles, which we will then drop off at the various consignors in order to exchange them for shlotinkis. Once we have accumulated enough money, we must acquire from the racketeer Stix the entrance badges of the various clubs on campus. We then have the leisure to attend various classes: a wacky MCQ during music class, a football match at the sports club, or play a role in an amateur play.

The title is full of humor and bizarre situations: The correct answer here is: “He just dabbed and left!” »

Each of its events is carried out via a mini-game, of two different types. To answer the questions correctly, we will have to press at the right moment when the cursor passes through a gauge going from black to white, the white zone symbolizing the “Perfect!”. Otherwise, we just have to follow a very simple QTE, where we chain a combination of keys without any challenge. The title is intended to be accessible and focused on the story, but we have known much more fun, it must be recognized. The Easy and Normal difficulty modes offered at launch only affect the speed of the cursor.

The fun during the mini-games is close to nil.

Once we are well integrated into a club, the students or teachers of the said club ask us for various and varied services, then acting as secondary quests. We enter into Fedex-type missions for the most part, where we will then be summoned, for example, to help the janitor at different times of the day by bringing him his missing tools. Other cases, Vladimir the handsome kid will ask us to distribute his autographed photos to his fans or Nikolai will come to ask for our help to cook a birthday cake for his best friend. This becomes an opportunity to make some friends and add them in contact on the Kraken-net.

The social network Kraken-net is integrated, but brings nothing essential.

This internal social network at the academy distills us some information on the different protagonists, but unfortunately, this does not give any clue on the objectives of the missions. We are just learning each other’s character traits, their tastes, but that’s about it. It’s a shame not to use this feature to investigate everyone’s motivations, it gives us an impression of futility and furniture. We could have used it to scrutinize certain profile photos or group conversations here and there to move forward, but that’s not the case. This is limited to a very small page per character, containing information slightly reinforcing the background, without doing more.

Clues are highlighted during the dialogue phases.

Finally, each chapter ends with a slightly longer mission, during which time can neither be advanced nor reversed. The plots vary from mission to mission and are much more interesting than those done on free time. They will take place on specific days and times and must be carried out at once, otherwise they will have to be started from scratch. It takes about half an hour for each one. For example, we will be responsible for investigating a sect of painters, or defending a student in the school tribunal while providing proof of her innocence, collected beforehand. We thus make new friends, and free ancestral spirits, always with the aim of progressing in our investigation of the Perfidious. Once the chapter is over, we go back in time, and move on. Fortunately, the humor of the situations and the zaniness of certain dialogues make it possible to digest the redundancy of the secondary missions and the lack of variety in the mini-games.

A feeling of incompleteness despite everything

Time travel might have been a really good idea if going back to the past or teleporting to the future had any real consequences, but it doesn’t. There will be no major changes in the scenario or any particular impact, the protagonists will not remember telling us about their worries when returning to the present, but we will keep all the objects collected in our inventory. . Students and teachers are always in the same place at the same time, so we just have to join them to deliver the desired object. The mission accomplished, the character concerned then brings almost nothing more to the story or the background, except 3 or 4 of them, who could well offer to take the bus and go on a date in order to consolidate your friendship.

We are constantly reminded of the remaining time.

You should also know that the time loop is relatively short, one minute in real life is equivalent to one hour in the game, for a total loop of 72 minutes. The round trips are therefore numerous and can at times become a bit off-putting, especially when we have forgotten to give such an object to such a character, on such a day. To avoid untimely returns to the past, it will be good to regularly consult the quest log, and possibly take some notes in order to organize deliveries. Every 12 hours, a screen reminds us of the time remaining before the end of the world, and the appearance of earthquakes or crocodiles in the playground will remind you that the destruction of the school will indeed take place on Wednesday evening.

Before that, we have a few secrets to find in places. Some costumes that we can recover will help us then. The skeleton costume grants us more strength, allowing us to break through a cracked wall in order to reveal a hidden passage or a reclusive quest giver. The fanatic costume makes it possible to infiltrate a cult and cast satanic incantations while keeping our identity under wraps. This will also give rise to a few lines of dialogue, sometimes amusing, sometimes a little trashy.

It will be necessary to attend the courses of theatre, arts, sport and music.

The exchanges take place most of the time in the form of small skits in the style of visual novels, dubbed only with onomatopoeia. The relatively colorful illustrations of the characters are quite nice and contrast with the cruder and lackluster pixel art of the environments. Only the last quarter of an hour of the title has lyrics, in English, before a final a little more agitated than the rest of the adventure, the title being particularly devoid of fights. Otherwise, all the texts are in French.

For success lovers, they are listed under a dedicated tab.

If there are a few puzzles to solve, including one or two slightly capillotractées, the title is still very accessible and can be completed in a few hours. For lovers of success, know that it took us about ten hours for 100%. Achievements are also listed in a dedicated tab on the pause menu. There’s only one that requires some skill, otherwise they’re just completely surmountable objectives. If necessary, the few Filth-Scab Machines allow us to make backups that we can load at leisure. We also have the possibility of exchanging currency for furniture for our room and thus decorating it as we see fit. The possibilities of personalization remain weak, especially since it is totally useless as we spend relatively little time there.

In terms of the musical atmosphere, it’s quite varied. The main menu’s J-Pop theme is surprising at first. Each area of ​​the map will have very distinct sounds, the lake area and its marching band tunes are nicely complementary to the fiddles and more classic sounds of the drama club. The OST remains of good quality, without being the most memorable.

Tested on Xbox Series X.