Rocwood Academy

Well, what can I say? The story moves so fast the flash could not keep up with it; your choices do not matter; it is a Harry Potter ripoff, and the battle system is useless. Does the game have good points? yes. Almost every kid character is cute, and almost all adult characters are good to look at. The art is simply gorgeous. This game is the opposite of Academagia; while that game has wonderful writing and a terrible interface, this one has shallow writing and a gorgeous interface. It just lacks so much stuff that I cannot recommend it.

I love magic school games, but this one is barely a game. You click through pieces of uninspired, bland dialogue on small index cards, choosing options that don't seem to change much if anything at all. You collect spells and items for a minigame that, as you are explicitly told, changes nothing in the story - and that has an awful tutorial that for examples explains what various cards do only after it forces you to choose the cards you are going to play with. There's no lore to be explored, no interesting storylines and engaging characters, nothing. The music is nice albeit generic, but the little bits of voice acting only serve to irritate. The art is pretty nice, but that's it.

The writing/characters are so shallow and terrible.

The pace and storyline don't really feel like they flow in a way that makes sense. "Days" jump without any real structure or effect, and hardly any decisions seem to really matter. The visuals aren't very engaging either, and the game mechanic for "Challenges" was confusing. I quit after trying for a few hours.

Rocwood Academy is charming for what it is, but I wish it had more content than the first chapter. The game mechanics are pretty simple and so is the basic storyline, but that's probably to be expected for the price point. The main thing is that the game only has one chapter, which encompasses one school year in the game, and no other chapters have been released at the time of writing this review (February 2025), 6 years after the game's original release. Like some of the other reviews have said, there's not a whole lot to the story because of the fact that it's only chapter 1, and that chapter is mostly setting up the groundwork for the main storyline so it doesn't really get exciting until close to the end. All in all, the game isn't bad for the little content it has, but the biggest complaint is the lack of content and the fact that the game hasn't been given more content since its release. If you're looking for a game that has a deeper story/gameplay, then this isn't for you, but in my opinion, it's good enough to pass some time.

Surprisingly enjoyable narrative game with some simple battle gameplay elements. People might find the ending abrupt but it works well in my opinion and I welcome the rather 360° change in tone. I just hope they're still going through with the sequels.