Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story Review (PS4)

A school of randomly-generated students.  A staff of smoking hot women.  A power struggle between numerous factions.  This is Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story.

Valthirian Arc 2 is a game that I have fond memories of.  I spent a lot of time playing it on Kongregate several years.  Basically, you were tasked with building up a school and training up the students into future heroes.  This game pretty much the same thing, but scaled up to be bigger and badder than ever with 3-D graphics and a deeper story.

The death of the queen...

...leads to a power struggle, with the school trapped in the middle.

I'm not sure if this is a remake of Valthirian Arc 2 or a sequel, but the premise is the same.  Once again, you play as an all-seeing, disembodied principal and your goal is to train up the next crop of RPG heroes while making your school bigger and more prestigious.  You won't be alone, as you start of with a staff of three saucy vixens to help you.  There's the hot principal who runs the school, the hot blacksmith who makes weapons, and the hot librarian who does...nothing I've been able to discern yet.

The hot principal...

...hot blacksmith...

...and hot librarian are all ready to aid you in any way they can.

Gameplay is separated into two parts.  First, you build up the school itself.  You will build a number of facilities to guide your students in their quest to becoming legends of lore and make the school more profitable.  Classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, and other things will help both the school and the students succeed.  They aren't just for show, as they have an effect on how effective your students will be in battle and how much money the schools making.  Build dorms to recruit more students and training grounds (with the appropriate mentor) to upgrade them into better units.  At first you'll have to pick choose what to build because you have limited space.  If you want more spaces, you'll have to more your school more reputable.

You start off with a shithole, but eventually your school will be the envy of the land.

What you build will determine how well your students perform.

This is where the second part of the gameplay comes in; sending your students on missions.  There are two types of missions you can send your students on.  You have Hunts, where you take direct control of up to four students and hack your way through numerous short maps fighting cute little monsters.  Beware though, as cute doesn't mean weak.

Don't let the cuteness of the monsters fool you.  This is an ass-whuppin waiting to happen.

Combat is fairly rough.  Melee combat feels quite shitty, as your students' reach is so short and attacks are so weak, they might is well be fighting with toothpicks.  Armored units seem like their wearing toilet paper for armor.  You'll want to play as a ranged attacker as soon as you can and provide support from the backline while your teammates melee.  Until that happens, changing your party's Tactical Mode can help out.  Eventually, you can get healers, which helps out big time. This is because the students DO regenerate their health automatically, but it takes forever to wait for them to go from the brink of death back to full health.

Hunts can be varied in nature.  Sometimes you'll have to gather resources, have specific targets, or protect something.  Most of the times you'll just walk around putting a whuppin' on whatever monsters you see.  I do like how you can explore after the mission is complete, which allows you to kill more monsters for EXP and find resources to craft new weapons and accessories with.  In the first two games you were simply swept back to the school once the job was done.

The other type of missions are Errands, where you don't control the students at all.  You simply dispatch them and pray for good results.  There may be specific units you need to deploy or maybe you'll need your students at a certain level to increase the chances of success, but it's a mystery to me when this is the case.

When successful in either mission type, you'll get large amounts of Fame, which makes your school more reputable.  Get enough and your school will level up and get bigger, enabling you build more stuff.  You will also get lots of gold and participating students will receive lots XP, usually enough to level up.  There's no penalty for failure, so trot those kids out on as many missions as you can, even if they are suicidal.

Mission success nets big rewards, but failing doesn't really hurt you.

Going back to school mode, you can watch things happen.  Sometimes, incidents (indicated by a ! or ?) will happen.  If you intervene, you'll be given some choices and, depending on which what you decide, you'll a small amount of XP, Fame, or gold.  Other times, you'll just be rewarded with Fame or gold.  You'll also graduate students, which grants big XP and gold at the cost of losing the student.

Make sure to click on a "!" or "?" whenever you see them.

Some "!" and "?" situations are humorous.

When graduating students, try to pick the dregs, not the useful ones.

About the students.  You'll have to manage them if you want to succeed in those missions.  You'll give them weapons and accessories, put them in attack parties, promote them, or graduate them.  They get small XP gains simply by entering a classroom, but you'll want to send them on missions if you want them to really grow.  But whatever you do, don't send all of your attack parties on Errands, because time crawls and you'll be stuck doing a lot of nothing.  Going on Hunts passes time more quickly, so make sure to have one party available to go hunting while the others go on errands.

Managing students' skill and equipment is a must if you want to succeed.

When a student hits level 10, you can promote them...

...or graduate them.

On to the little stuff.  The graphics are pretty average.  Character models are truly shitty, though.  The students look generic at best and creepy at worst.  It's almost like the creators forgot they weren't designing a game for the Nintendo 64.  Perhaps they didn't put any effort into them because of the high turnover of the students.  Honestly, the graphics of Valthirian Arc 2 and even the original Valthirian Arc were more appealing all across the board.  The 2D style of those game have a charm this game doesn't have.

You'll want to hurry and graduate this bunch of uglies.  Especially that second one...

The music is also weak compared to Valthirian Arc 2.  In fact, some it is just inferior remakes of the Valthirian Arc 2 songs.  Valthirian Arc 2's soundtrack sticks with you a little more.

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story is, at the very least, an interesting game.  Melee combat feels off and leveling up the school can feel grindy.  Still, the gameplay does match up for the most part, save for the occasional performance hiccup.  The graphics work well enough, but they don't have the charm of the first two games.  It still fairly addictive, though.  Give It A Try.