A great game, like a great short romantic movie that you want to see again and again, because it's so good and so cute. The voice acting is surprisingly good and I really enjoyed playing it. OP song 10/10 - a nice choice! And the fact that it's fully animated is also a big plus!. There is no CG Gallery and that would be the only downside. Yes, the game is short, but the experience is well worth a shot. Really loved it... Highly recommending it!

Oh my Lord, less than an hour into it and Boyfriend of the Tsundere Simulator is amazing!

Pros: Music is alright, Tsundere is both Tsun and Dere, The CGI is cool, the artwork look amazing, the Voice Acting is Spot on.

Cons: I preferred Yuuna in Ace Academy

Kaori (Tsundere Girlfriend) is one of the Heroines of Ace Academy and boy oh boy is her family the best. In Story they Ship the MC and Kaori together so much that said Tsundere gets embarrassed over it. You'll wish your Girlfriend's family would get her those sort of presents 'if you know what I mean' So far it has been a delight.

So just buy the game Poi

Gigguk calls you trash in here
10/10

~So onto the review~


Kaori after Story is fun and immersive. The choices are great as is their variety as I have come to expect from Pixel Fade.
I personally Found the use of the Live2D to have improved slightly from Crystalline. The background art was quite well done; I enjoyed the new scenes - it helps that I love Christmas and Snow as well. I enjoyed "meeting the family" and found the general interaction between all the characters to be quite good- Nice flowing chemistry, nothing felt forced. Voice acting as always continues to be a strong suit; Kaori was perfect and her family felt 'Just Right'. (Especially her sisters).The OST was also quite well done; and fitting to both the story as a whole and specific moments.

As far as time goes I would say if you take your time and enjoy it 4-8 hours (reading spead) So the price is also reasonable.

To generalize

Pros
• Good Art
  
• Good Ost
  
• Live2D
  
• Fun and Immersive story
  
• The Amount of choices and their Variety
  
• Good Voice acting
  
• General Solid Enjoyment

Cons
• No Valerie After Story yet
  
• I wish it had included a time skip to Kaori and MC married with Kids

So in summary if you Enjoyed Ace Academy ; and played at least Kaori's route (play them all!) This is for you. Plus you get to see Kaori in motion with Live2D!

Poi~

It's basically a story about how life would be if you chose Kaori in the previous game. It's relaxing. Nothing too special or fancy.

I would've been happier if they made one with Valerie though.

Please , Stop being a pervert.

10/10

And go for that booty.

Short, but sweet! Definitely recommended after finishing ACE Academy.

I enjoyed the engine upgrade with the animations, the only thing I missed was being able to use my scroll wheel to go back in dialogue. I used that in ACE to explore different dialogue options a lot.

Anyway, if you enjoyed Kaori in ACE, this is a must have.
I'm really hoping we'll eventually see more "After Stories" from ACE.

Kaori After Story is essentially a ~$10 epilogue to ACE Academy's Kaori route. If you haven't played ACE or you didn't like Kaori as a character there, you probably won't get as much enjoyment out of this, since it's basically two hours of super fluffy romance with her. It has nothing to do with the main plot of ACE, most of the other ACE characters only get cameos, it's focused entirely on Kaori and her family. There's no deep and meaningful conflict to be resolved, no deep drama or angst, it's pure slice of life fluff.

Normally I'd be a bit wary of ten bucks for such a short game. Especially since I liked Yuuna more than Kaori in ACE. But I was impressed with Pixelfade's offerings in ACE and Crystalline, so I decided to take a chance on this game once I noticed who made it.

I'm glad I did. While it's short, it's very sweet. Incredibly so. Kaori is still the same tsundere she was in ACE, but she's mellowed out, a lot of the rough edges are worn down, and I feel like she hit the right balance between tsun and dere here. I found her considerably more charming here than I did for the majority of ACE.

Switching to Live2D made Kaori really pop as a character, since now she moves and emotes in motion. Her voice actress also sounded more comfortable in the role too, and the secondary characters were well drawn, well voice acted (and everything's in English, unlike most VNs out there - and this makes for a much better experience in practice), and the backgrounds seemed more detailed than ACE. Ultimately, this game generally felt very high on the production values compared to ACE. Pixelfade's clearly put their greater experience and resources now to good use.

Performancewise I found this game generally ran better on my ancient laptop than Crystalline did, probably because Kaori is the only Live2D character on screen at any one time. No hitches or pauses, and everything felt smoother in this game. I also noticed that Kaori's Live2D also seemed more emotive than the ones in Crystalline. Several times I caught her changing her expression as she was talking whereas I didn't notice that sort of thing so much in Crystalline. It's a little detail, but it helped make her seem more lively and emotive.

However, if you go in expecting huge amounts of replayability or meaningful choices, you'll be disappointed. All the choices you make in this game seem to result in a few different lines of dialog or slightly different scenes at best, and the same broad plot unfolds basically no matter what you do. Still, it's a cute plot involving cute romance with a cute girl. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ultimately I found I didn't mind how linear the game was because the romance was so fluffy and sweet. I didn't mind the length either because despite being so short, there was enough sugar to satisfy me and it generally *felt* complete. At no point did it feel like it dragged on like in some VNs, and nor did it feel rushed like ACE's ending did.

If you're expecting porn, you'll be disappointed. While Steam allows 18+ games now, the lewdest thing this game has is handholding and a couple of vaguely suggestive scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a PG13 movie.

TLDR: Kaori After Story is a super cute romance story involving Kaori from ACE Academy. Good production values. Short and to the point, and that point is sugary fluff. Well worth the price I paid in spite of short length, even as someone who was neutral on Kaori in ACE. I recommend it.

It was hard for me not to get excited when, shortly after Crystalline’s release, the studio announced Kaori After Story – a spin-off to Ace Academy, continuing the romance arc of Kaori, arguably the primary heroine of the first game. Using the Live 2D engine and animations from Crystalline, it promised to be another eye-candy, this time directed to the fans of PixelFade's debut title. What worried me, however, was that it was also described by the devs as primarily a comedy, most likely ignoring the bitter-sweet climate of the original and its somewhat ambivalent ending. Thankfully, as much as some might be disappointed with this game’s obvious disinterest in continuing Ace Academy’s main intrigue, connected to protagonist’s father’s scientific research and tragic death, there are many things here they should find highly satisfying – and even I, as reserved as I was when approaching KAS, couldn’t help but to enjoy it quite a lot.

Kaori, the leader of the protagonist’s team of mecha pilots, was the heroine with probably the most intricate and fun romance arc in Ace Academy. While her modern-tsundere attitude might be off-putting to some, there were many highly amusing interactions connected to her and fairly unique, memorable scenes that still stick to my mind, more than a year after reading AA. Especially if you chose the athletic archetype when starting the game, it was easy to create a genuine chemistry between her and the protagonist, both highly skilled and ambitious pilots, pulling each other up on their way to the very top. However, maybe more than any other route, it lacked genuinely romantic moments, in which Kaori would truly open up to the protagonist or show him affection, even though it was clear enough that she loved him. Whether connected to the whole project being cut short or not, it left me feeling just slightly unsatisfied with the whole scenario at the end of the original game.

Kaori After Story feels like it was created exactly to fix this issue. Starting a few months after the end of Ace Academy, it involves the couple spending their Holiday break in Kaori’s hometown, along with her family. It focuses on the blooming relationship between her and the protagonist, completely forgoing the drama and delivering a few hours of absolutely lovely, light-hearted romantic fluff. The chemistry between the couple is definitely there, and Kaori’s family is highly likeable – as always in PixelFade’s games, all of it enhanced by good-quality voice acting.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean the experience is flawless. My possibly biggest gripe is connected to choices offered to the reader. While the romantic/slight teasing ones feel lovely and satisfying, you also have the option of being an over-the-top pervert or an annoying grump. The problem is, making these latter choices is nearly completely ineffectual for the plot and the ending – and there are paths in which there is really no reason for Kaori to not lose at least some of her faith in the protagonist. In what is essentially a piece of “fanservice” for people that liked Kaori’s arc and want to see her romance with the protagonist blooming, some of the choices really make no sense whatsoever, especially considering the fact that the conclusion is always a decisively positive one. While I can see the reason for including a few over-the-top, “stupid” choices, the unromantic/insensitive options simply leave a bad taste with your mouth, also serving no real purpose other than creating additional “interactivity”.

The game, as mentioned before, is absolutely lovely visually, capitalizing on the technical expertise and assets the studio gained during the production of Crystalline. I was worried that with the repurposed animations and new sprite, the story might lose some of its personality, but in reality, everything felt appropriate and genuinely nice to watch. All things considered, this should be a great treat for the fans of Ace Academy, and especially those like me, who really enjoyed Kaori’s arc. And if you haven’t played AA… What are you waiting for? Go grab it already! It’s really worth it.

My favorite girl in ACE Academy gets a sequel. How could I not love it?

But PixelFade is back to their old tricks. If they can't make a proper ending, they tease you with an unreachable future.

Play this game to the end to see what happens. It makes you wonder what happens next.

Then you promptly realize that there's not going to be a sequel to this because this is a sequel.

How bittersweet.