Agefield High: Rock the School Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

In theory, Agefield High: Rock the School should be the ideal love letter to Bully. Heck, if you just take a moment to admire its letterman jacket, you’ll see just about everything that made Bully (or Canis Canem Edit, for the European freshmen) the cult classic that it was during Rockstar Games’ tenure as a prefect. Yet, it almost pains me to admit it, but the truth is, aside from it being a love letter to American Pie and post-nineties faux punk, Agefield High is a rather tough piece of work to gawp at. And by that I mean, it’s a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.

Visually, the game is all rather hit and miss; The Polar Express immediately springs to mind here, what with its creepy models, deadpan emotions and AI-looking shoddiness. Unfortunately, the letterman jacket has a little more bad patchwork on its sleeve, too, with sloppy stitches, technical issues, and a general lack of confidence in its own ability to construct a perfect love letter to a once-beloved high school sim.

Believe me, I want to love Agefield High: Rock the School. Given that it is the closest that we’ll probably ever get to a Bully remake (we’re looking at you with stern eyes, Rockstar), it seems as if this is the next best option. The problem is, there’s a big difference between a good option and the only option. On paper, it should work—the open-world campus, the raunchy comedy, and the open-ended quest lines and class curriculum. It all sounds like a perfect recipe, yet it sadly fails to deliver a concrete foundation for its audience. The technical teething errors dampen its delivery, and because of that, you don’t have a great spiritual successor on your hands, but an imitation that struggles to appeal to every clique in the lunch hall.

There isn’t much of a story to unravel here. Matter of fact, it’s about as on-brand as a cliche-riddled nineties romcom. Picture it: a new kid on the block enrolls in a school, clashes with the local jocks, and decides to make a few friends and throw the ultimate party to win over the factions. With that, you have all of the necessary tropes to build a giggle-worthy, albeit dated plot. There’s panty-stealing, clique-fueled conflict, and of course, education. But then, it’s easier to forget about the diploma, as it’s an afterthought that, when saddled next to the high school shenanigans, is about as useless as a TP-powered BMX. The raunchiness, on the other hand, is what makes this school bop; the first quest is to steal panties from the girl’s dorm. You don’t need to hear much more than that to get a gist of what it’s all about, really.

Of course, if you’re not embarking on various fetch quests or flushing your education down the toilet in some simple mathematical pop quizzes or literature exams, then you’re essentially out exploring a small world and soaking up the technical shoddiness of it all. See, Agefield High has a structure, as does it have a good deal of main quests to complete. The problem is, it doesn’t tell you when each quest will be available. Rather, it saddles you with a bunch of time-locked blimps, and then assumes that you’ll know when to visit them to begin the process. For example, if you travel to a mission starting point, but also arrive at the wrong time of day, then you are told to wait out your turn, complete the day, and try again on the next.

Needless to say that, if the world had dozens of things to do outside of class, then there wouldn’t be much of a reason to raise a complaint here. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t cram a lot into its world for you to take a stab at. If, say, you’re not in school or attending classes, then you’re simply biding your time and waiting for the next story beat to unveil itself — which is about as common as a solar eclipse, given that it never actually tells you when each event will take place. Nobody knows what’s going on, but according to the cliques, you should know everything that there is to know about the food chain, the world, and the classroom hijinks.

The backbone of Agefield is spread across three parts: walking, punching, and biking. For the most part, each mission rolls out in a similar way: kids cut class, venture out to see what’s kicking, and decide to cause a little mischief. In one case, they explore a haunted house—a side adventure that primarily involves them walking, bumping into things, and then calling it a day. In another instance, they decide to poke around in a local affair to uncover the truth about a deceitful marriage. But of course, nothing ever really adds up, nor does anything ever amount to a well-oiled climax. It all makes for a fitting high school story, though, apparently.

Don’t get me wrong, the bite-sized world does cough up a few side jobs for you to take a shot at. Granted, it isn’t on the same scale as Bully, given that most of its “side jobs” are mere emulations of existing jobs. Still, the game does give you enough to sink your teeth into. Classes, on the other hand, are a strange addition. See, the game doesn’t reprimand you for skipping class. If you do choose to attend, then you earn a set amount of money depending on your final grade. It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t exactly add much weight to the overall experience. But it’s school, so the homework is mandatory. Sadly, though, it just comes across as more of an afterthought than a crucial part of the curriculum.

I think, when it all boils down to it, Agefield High’s biggest problem is its lack of technical polish. Aside from its unintentionally bad-looking characters and lackluster world, the game also suffers from a lot of sloppy design elements. The animation and controls, for example, don’t have that buttery smooth quality to them. The combat is a little iffy, as are most of the actions, annoyingly. And as for the environment, well, let’s just say that it looks like the final product of an AI-built prompt. It might deliver on its promise to capture the essence of the nineties, but it just fails to fill its canvas with cohesive ideas.

While I can find it within myself to give it credit as an indie game, Agefield High does struggle to establish itself as a fully-fledged, airtight experience. In time, it could become an excellent centerpiece for the average high school experience. At present, though, it’s a C-, if anything. It has all of the parts to work with, truly. It just doesn’t know how to assemble them properly to create a plausible narrative.

Verdict

Agefield High: Rock the School has the potential to shove Rockstar’s Bully into a locker and call it a nerd. Sadly, though, it has more bark than bite in a dog-eat-dog world — and it shows on its torn letterman jacket, with poor physics, questionable animations, and bad world design choices that, unfortunately, harbor more teething problems than a braced freshman. In time, it could become a brilliant game. At the time of writing, though, it feels as if there’s a lot left for it to achieve before it fully embraces its potential.