Academy of Champions: Soccer

 
 

Academy of Champions: Soccer has a very interesting idea. A soccer game where in the story mode you're living your life at a "Soccer Academy." It's too bad that the idea and the first hour or so is one of the few inventive thing to be had here.

Once you start the story mode of Academy of Champions: Soccer, you're given a calendar, in which every day has certain events ranging from "un-fun minigames" or the always exciting "gossip" where teammates will tell you things that seem like the help messages you get on loading screens. The final event is when they give a small variety where it could be doing actual games, upgrading players, or buying accessories. I'm about to hurt your head with math but try and follow me here. There is three terms, each being around 30 days. You have to perform in every one of those days. Each day has 3 events you have to do. That's 90 events. Around 40-50 of those events will be incredibly repetitive mini-games. That's just bad, give me the option to sim the events at least.

Throughout the schedule there is certain red days marked on your map, these signify "Boss Matches." Every Boss Match has a special feature that the team will use (Have one incredibly good player, take away your accessories, etc.) that is supposed to give them an edge over you. It also feels like these special features were supposed to liven the game up but it doesn't do that at all. It makes it feel incredibly unbalanced and cheap.

Luckily, there is normal games to be played throughout the story which is easily where I had the most fun. It does exactly what it should, be a good game of soccer with a very arcade-like feel. When you go into score a goal, a target will appear, that should be a good aiming assist but it feels a little janky and just doesn't seem as if it works... Then again, scoring is easy anyways. The enemy AI is so bad that it is as simple as moving from one side to the other quickly, pressing B, and you have a point.

Throughout the match you're playing, you'll earn points which will go into your "Style Bar", after filling up said bar, you can then activate a Special Move. Meaning your character can take an extra powerful shot, charge through people, or jump around. They all vary. The bad part is, they seem very throw-away and I fount myself using that bar as my boost bar so I would know how much boost I have left before having to slow down. Also, you can't boost on offence which is just dumb.

The environments you play in may not be constantly changing but the ones you will see all look very good. They aren't necessarily the most beautiful things ever, they're just very different from other soccer fields which is great. To elaborate, there is a map where the goal is a monsters mouth. That's one of the very rare things that never gets old in Academy of Champions: Soccer. The entire games actually looks pretty decent, all the characters have a specifically designed style that makes them stand out quite a bit. The intention to detail on an overweight man has never been greater.

I really wanted to enjoy Academy of Champions: Soccer and it is a pretty good game if you can get over the incredibly tedious things that fills it. It would have benefited by being a lot shorter and either eliminating mini-games altogether or at least having some more so that I'm not constantly doing the same thing over and over. To me, it feels as if the developers had in their mind "Let's fill the game with content" but forgot to make the content fun.