Dialogues also suffer a bit from Love in Space’s persistent mannerisms, which not always fit the characters and situations involved (including the ever-present “Mou.” and “Fufufufu”, which I have yet to find in similar quantities in any other VNs). The arcs themselves are however not without some heavy flaws when it goes to writing and pacing – the drama, especially in Chigara’s and Asaga’s route, feel forced and the resolutions to it rather anticlimactic.
All stories are similarly enjoyable, doing a decent job when it goes to character development and making the heroines likeable – Academy is, admittedly, much better in this department than the main Sunrider games. After the introductory common route, that makes you familiar with both the characters and the game mechanics, you can choose to enter the romance arc with any girl with whom you have high enough affection level (the arcs are, of course, mutually exclusive). The heroine routes take some of the defining themes of the girls’ original stories (like time travel for Sola or forced marriage for Asaga) and give them a spin that makes them compatible with the new setting. From the technical standpoint, the game is definitely a dating sim before anything else, as the dialogue choices are pretty much just an extra factor influencing the affection meters, while everything else is determined by the stats and the schedule you set up for yourself every day. Apart from managing three club's morale, readiness and member count, you have to work on your personal stats, earn money and fight for the affection of the girls through events and random encounters (during which you choose from a list of topics, that might or might not be appreciated by the heroine). All this is achieved through pretty involved and extensive resource management gameplay. During the school year, his tasks are to save the clubs from being closed, lead them into progressively harder competitions while keeping up with his own studies and (hopefully) finding a girlfriend. The plot itself involves Kayto being ordered by Ava to act as a manager for the three "trouble” student clubs (swimming, science and kendo), each led by one of the heroines. While you could expect some of these appearances to be just excuses to reuse visual assets (that is admittedly done a lot with sprites and backgrounds), it's not really the case – Fontana for example only shows up in two unique CGs and many other references to mainline Sunrider games are fairly clever and elaborate, definitely not done in a lazy way you could expect from this kind of spin-off. The game, however, places three more Sunrider heroines, Asaga, Chigara and Sola, as fellow students within the Academy, while other characters from the main games, like Admiral G ray or Veniczar Fontana, make cameos in setting-appropriate roles. Many elements of the setting match the already established lore – Kayto's close relationship with his younger sister Maray, his role as student council vice-president and the presence of Ava as both his childhood friend the overly strict council president are all known from the flashbacks in Mark of Arcadius. The alternate storyline follows our usual protagonist, Kayto Shields, as a second-year high school student in the prestigious Sunrider Academy.
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