Pocket Academy 3 is the latest entry in developer Kairosoft’s Pocket Academy series. In this game, you’ll take control of a school as you work to help your students improve their skills and get their dream jobs after graduation.
Your students are the main focus of the game and the lifeblood of your academy. They spend three years in total at your school, during which they will take classes, participate in clubs and festivals, fall in love, and work towards achieving good careers. New students enroll at the beginning of the year, though individual transfer students can also enroll later in the year. Winning contests and impressing students through tours will result in potential students that can later enroll in your school. The two main measures of how well your students are doing are their grade stats and their test results.
Stats include Athletics, Music, Social, Flair, IT, and Spirit. They are raised by are raised through item use, by their use of facilities you’ve placed, by participating in club practice matches, and through a small boost at the end of each in-game day. These stats help determine how well a student will do when put in charge of a special event, how well they do at practice matches, and their chance of getting their selected profession post-graduation. Reaching thresholds for certain students will also unlock special requests that will add new options for school events or new facilities for your school grounds.
Test results include English, Math, Spanish, Science, and Social Studies. Their total grade from each of these is added together to get their overall test result. These grades are raised when the students attend classes each morning and can be raised further by holding special classes. National rankings are held periodically, and having students that get high grades will result in government grants to further improve your school.
The one of the major goals of the game is to help your students graduate and get the jobs they’re aiming for while building . You can see the stats and grades students with job aspirations need as well as their percent chance of graduating at any time. For students with low chances of getting the chosen job, you can either help them increase their stats and grades or select a different career path for them to follow. Students that do well in club practice matches may also be scouted for job paths that can’t otherwise be selected. On graduation day, the salaries of the successful students are added up and you’re given a percentage. This means it’s good to pay attention to the risk-reward of different career paths when your students are getting close to graduating. Students getting their dream jobs will also help increase your school’s reputation, increasing the number of potential students for the incoming class.
This is one of the easier games to go bankrupt in due to the income system. While you’ll get occasional bonuses from the government based on graduation rates and student test scores, your most steady source of income will be from tuition costs. You receive your students’ tuition at the end of the day, and the facility upkeep cost and teachers’ salaries are deducted directly afterward. This can sometimes make it hard to determine how much you’re able to comfortably spend on leveling up teachers or buying new facilities without sending your school’s finances into the red. The beginning of the game is a little slow as a result, but as you raise your school’s rank, popularity, and reputation, you’ll start to accumulate more incoming students and a higher tuition rate per student.
In most aspects, this is the most polished Pocket Academy title. It’s the easiest to accumulate research points for boosting your students' grades, you have more control over how likely your students are to get their dream jobs, and it’s the hardest to go bankrupt in. You’ve got more direct control over different aspects leading to more involved gameplay and fine-tuning and less sitting and waiting for the end of the day. This game is a little lacking in translation polish, however, which feels strange for a Kairosoft game. It’s not terrible and it never leads to anything being hard to understand, but it’s a little distracting when it comes up because it’s below the normal Kairosoft translation standard. Other than that, this is a solid Kairosoft title, and the best place to jump in if you want to get into the Pocket Academy series.
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