Agefield High: Rock the School Review

Many have been pining for a Bully sequel for a long time, but Rockstar Games have understandably been busy with other projects. Agefield High: Rock the School is an ambitious title that takes us back to that early 2000s era. Developed by Refugium Games and published on Xbox Series X/S by Perp Games, it is now available to purchase. The huge question is, does it take the inspiration of the classic Bully game and run with similar ideology, or does it trip and fall flat? Keep reading, and I’ll reveal all my thoughts.

Detention Was Never This Disappointing

In Agefield High: Rock the School, you play as Sam, a teenager who has recently relocated to the town of Agefield. With only a few months left of school until graduation, you have to merge into this new setting. Before you know it, you are interacting with the school bullies, different friendship groups and more. Setting up the storyline sounds promising. However, barely minutes into the game, you’ll realise you’re going to be in for a rough ride with this adventure. Enduring 10 hours of it was pretty painful, and I had to do this in short stints to avoid fatigue with a lot of its broken mechanics and tedious combat.

Understandably, this game is an indie project and will never have had the financial backing a Rockstar game could provide. But I feel a lot longer in this oven, and this game could have been substantially better off. Most of the plot and dialogue is carried through cutscenes with characters that appear like they are staring into space, disinterested in what the other person is saying. I will admit that I was chuckling at how bad it was, so at least these portions of the game provided me with some laughs. You can see the passion in the project is there, but it never quite lands how the studio probably intended.

Every Good Idea Is Buried Beneath Layers Of Frustration

Outside of the poorly designed cutscenes and world-building, it is a pretty serviceable map that is well constructed. However, the open-world setting often feels stale and empty, and whilst there is a sprinkling of NPCs knocking around, they are often bugged, or two characters become embedded within each other. It’s not a vast map, and there never seemed to be a reason to explore it after looking around the first time.

When it comes to the gameplay, it follows a similar premise to the Bully game. You’ll attend and interact with classes, complete missions and build relationships with other students. Pranks, fights, and the opportunity to earn money are all possible, and it all sounds very exciting until it isn’t. Classes are quite fun to engage with to begin with; different subjects have you doing several tasks. For example, in English you’ll be expected to do spelling tests or fill in missing letters. These do require you to use a bit of brainpower at least. After a few hours, though, these lessons get quite repetitive and stale very quickly.

At first, I was a bit baffled at why money would be involved in this game, but you can use it to spend on items throughout the game. Beyond this, though, it doesn’t serve much purpose. Skipping lessons and generally causing trouble can get you collared by school security. So you can dabble between being the perfect student or just being as rebellious as possible. When it comes to combat, it is just frustrating more than satisfying. Punches and kicks are hard to land correctly, and when they do, they don’t feel or come across as impactful. The mechanics just feel sluggish and a chore to contend with overall, which isn’t great.

Visuals & Audio

Visually, Agefield High: School of Rock isn’t all bad and captures the aesthetic of that early 2000s era throughout the entire experience. The downside is the game is riddled with visual bugs. At one point, I was walking around the school corridors to see people combining. This made it appear like people had two heads, and whilst it was laughable, it also made me shake my head at how poor it was. Who tested this before it launched to the world?

Performance on Xbox Series X was adequate, and I didn’t suffer many issues here, but it never felt fully polished. Facial animations on cutscenes are dreadful, to the point that when characters are talking, their mouths move like an animatronic. Character models in general just come across with zero personality and robotic body language. I actually enjoyed some of the dialogue throughout the game, and some of it captured the feeling of what it would be like in a 2000s school setting. Unfortunately, though, some of the voice acting comes across as a bit flat, unnatural, and weak. That said, the soundtrack fares considerably better, with some great rock music that sounds like it’s straight out of something like an American Pie movie.

Final Thoughts

Many have wanted a successor to Bully for years. Rockstar smashed that experience out of the park, and I feel players will look at Agefield High: School of Rock and believe it can capture that same setting and atmosphere. Sadly, it misses the mark in almost every way. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this one even if it were priced lower, for several reasons. With its underdeveloped world, frustrating combat and countless bugs, it makes the gameplay tedious to engage with.

Whilst I can see what the development team are trying to achieve here, it just comes off as massively underbaked. I admire the passion and ambition here, but I’d steer clear of this one until issues are ironed out or some updates come along to address the shortcomings. If you feel like you still want to play this one after reading all of this, you can pick up a copy HERE.