Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story is a mix of a management sim and ARPG. It's relatively simple; you send your students on missions to kill mobs, gather resources, or complete whatever objectives, during which the ARPG part takes place and you actively control one of the four that you send out, and can switch between them at any time, then use the money and materials to build up your school, giving the students bonuses while they're fighting and allowing them to reach higher levels, etc. Gameplay: 3.5/5 The combat is simple but fun. Each class has one active skill with a 10-20 second cooldown and a basic attack. It's somewhat annoying for mages as they can only shoot in 8 directions, whereas melees swing in an arc and gunners auto-lock on when in range. The dungeons are mostly randomized square areas which often have staircases going up to a second floor with nothing there. While the two-floor aspect is neat in theory, it doesn't really add much and makes running around collecting objectives more bothersome. Story: 2.5/5 It's there, and it's not terrible, there's just not much of it. Balance: 2.0/5 This is where the game fails. The two main currencies to build up your school are gold and fame. Gold is obtained in small amounts from missions, large amounts from graduating students, and astronomical amounts from gold production buildings (mainly farms and greenhouses). Once you have a farm or two, obtainable early in the game, you will quickly generate more gold than you can spend, making acquiring gold no longer relevant. You can also buy materials and weapons from the merchant (though they have a very random and limited selection each time), which often include endgame quality weapons that are now available early game. The merchant also sells recipes and crafting resources in large quantities (which are very slow to acquire in missions, even in late game, they only drop one at a time, when you need hundreds to create a high level item). So, except for a couple of legendary weapons obtainable only through quests, this merchant will provide almost all your weapons and craft resources. The other resource is fame. This is given in small amounts for completing missions, and while it can be passively generated by buildings similar to gold, the amount gained is minimal until much later. The main method of getting this is "graduating" students, which the game forces you to graduate at least one per semester (6 months of game time, or...

First of all, the game is broken, has been for years, and the devs refuse to fix it. The final achievement cannot be obtained, so if you care about that sort of thing, don't get the game. The gameplay itself is extremely simplistic. I "thought" this was going to be a city builder with RPG elements, but both of those concepts are sooo minimal in the game. You can build on plots that are designed for certain buildings. That's it. No design, no strategy, no trying to maximize stuff, no real city building elements, just choosing what goes on a plot. The RPG elements are terrible as well. You level up your students now and then, and the level ups are very few (I think there's like 6 upgrades), and they do basically nothing (5% increase to attack! wow...). The fights themselves are just a few enemies scattered on the map, and you push the attack button at them. That's it. The whole game is far too simplistic, there's no real gameplay, no thought, or anything, plus it's broken. It's just a very, very bad game.

The combat isn't anything spectacular and managing building the school isn't either but it still manages to be fun enough despite not really being the best in anything. It's just a good little mindless time killer you could probably play while also watching Netflix or good to pick up and put down as needed because the storyline isn't hard to follow and combat is not hard to remember. I'm sure it would be great on the steam deck and not bad at all for a cheap rpg you don't have to pay too much attention to.

Pretty charming game, nice aesthetic. You manage a combat school, and send your recruits on missions. You can get new people to join your school, you can unlock advanced classes, etc. It's like a simple school building sim mixed with top down combat. Some theings can get slightly repetitive, and the graduation requirement can be irritating, but it's still fun to play. It's not bad, certainly if it's on sale!

Disappointing game, it's both boring and confusing at the same time.

still early access vibes, kind of clunky right now but very cute.