Customer Rating: 
Summary: Like Brain Age Better
Comment: This game is somewhat hard to understand and hard to follow. I much prefer the brain age games to this one.
Customer Rating: Summary: Brain Age
Comment: I LOVE the oriduct. I gree it CAN get boring. It is funny and really makes you think. think there should be a little bit more instructions. I think it helps you remember things and analyze objects closer.
Customer Rating: Summary: Great Brain Building Fun - Recommended!
Comment: My 12 year old son found "Big Brain Academy" to be a very fun and engaging collection of puzzles and challenges aimed at building up your reasoning ability. He makes the following observations:
Graphics: Great, they really enhance the game play
Controls: Easy to master, mostly with the stylus
Playability: Great
Re-Playability: Great
Recommended!
Customer Rating: Summary: Fun game, a nice companion to Brain Age 2.
Comment: I'm not much of a gamer but enjoy playing the word games and "brain" games on the DS. I bought this game as a gift for my 10 year old but I find I play with it more often than she does. She prefers games like Guitar Hero DS and Pokemon Diamond to this game.
This game makes a great companion to the Brain Age 2 game. Brain Age 2 gives you certain activities like unscrambling words, guess the right mathematical sign, counting change, memory sprint, play a song on keyboard etc. which are designed to activate different areas of your brain. Some are more challenging than others and you unlock more activities as you go further in your training. I would not recommend that game for children under 9 years old as some activities will be too hard. The instructor in the game, who is too chatty for my liking, also says things like "This activity will activate the pre-frontal cortex of your brain" which is geared towards 10+ ages.
Brain Academy on the other hand has a slightly easier format and most can be played by ages 6-adult. There are 15 activities (or mini games) divided in 5 groups - Think, Compute, Analyze, Memory, Logic. There are 3 activities in each group in which you can choose the level Easy, Medium or Hard. You begin by practicing each activity and your performance is measured in "brain weight". You get awarded bronze, silver or gold medals for your efforts, a brain of 250g or more gets you the gold medal. As you go on, the game fills in your Brain Pentagon graph (for the 5 areas) to tell you where you may need more practice. When you feel ready you can take the test after which the game will tell you your grade. I prefer the Brain Academy method of scoring which takes your strongest score on each activity. In BA2 your score for each activity gets recorded only once a day and if you do that activity again on the same day with better results it does not register the results.
On Brain Academy you can also organize play offs with your friends who have a DS using only one game. My 5th grader can beat me on this one more easily than she can on Brain Age 2 as the activities are not too hard, you just need to pick up speed by practicing them regularly.
I think my kid summarized it correctly and I am paraphrasing for her here.
"Both Brain Age and Big Brain Academy have too few games. Once you know them all it can get boring. However, Big Brain Academy has more games than Brain Age 2 and when you play it you feel like you're having fun while learning. Brain Age 2 has the strict teacher who makes you feel like you're just learning."
Although I like both games I sort of agree with her opinion.
Customer Rating: Summary: A challenge for your mind!
Comment: Over all this is a wonderful game. It gets a little tedious at times and from a psychological stand point it is only good until you learn the game. By this I mean, once you are oriented and able to do the games at an A or B rating you should put it to the side for a while. To keep your brain active and functioning into old age it is best to try novel tasks, so obviously putting it to the side for a few weeks every now and then will help your brain functioning. If that is what you bought it for in the first place.
I still stand by it as a great game, best for the mind in sporadic doses!
