Review for Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 28/09/2018 The version for PC came out on 02/10/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 02/10/2018
The nice thing about reviewing niche games, apart from the moments when you would like to tear your hands and stop playing for your whole life, is that sometimes you may find yourself in your hands a real gem. It may be that My Hero Academia has in the last period infected a little everyone, but this is precisely the case of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story, a mixture of Management and RPG that under a cartoonish aspect hides a game capable of having fun and keeping you glued for several hours.
Initially born as a flash game - for those few who lived through that period - and after receiving even a sequel, the developers decided to go a step further by bringing their definitive game on Kickstarter, receiving not a few acclaim and appreciation. So sit back and find out in this review how forming real heroes can be a far from arduous undertaking.
New headmaster, new habits
Our adventure begins during the election ceremony of the new principal of the prestigious Valthirian Academy, a leading school for the birth and growth of future heroes. We are the person designated to take on this position, chosen unanimously after the retirement of the previous headmaster, and it is therefore up to us to put the academy back on its feet and earn it the prestige it so deserves.
Therefore, having chosen the name we would like to attribute to our institute, the game catapults us into what is one of the two main game phases present in Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story, or the management part. Here we will be able to manage the school in all respects (or almost), being able to decide which offices or structures to build, craft weapons and equipment for our students, manage finances and take care of growing the future heroes of the world. This follows the classic guidelines that every self-respecting management system has dictated well. The prestige of our academy it will be indicated by a level indicated by the letters from E to rise; this indicator, in addition to making us understand how much we are progressing with the game, will give us access to a series of very interesting functions.
It goes without saying that the higher it is, the greater the possibilities available to us, such as being able to build new buildings or the ability to access increasingly challenging missions. Just knowing that getting to the next level means building better structures, we assure you that it will put you in a position to do everything to get it up as quickly as possible. In addition to this, most of these will also be upgradeable by spending a certain amount of money, thus allowing us to have more efficient improvements.
But that is not all. As this is a school for heroes, some of the founding functions of the role-playing genre have been reserved for their growth. We will in fact have the opportunity to obtain and create weapons and equipment for our students, who can then be assigned through the appropriate menu. In Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story there are different types of weapons and accessories, each of them with their own characteristics and their rarity, exactly as you can admire in games like Diablo or as in any other RPG. Despite being relatively simple to manage, we found it quite interesting, especially once the secondary and advanced classes of the game were unlocked.
Last but not least, every few days passed we will be notified that we will have to do graduate our students, or at least one of them. To do this, the selected students must be brought to a minimum of level 10 and once they have left the academy they can no longer be used for the various missions. Don't worry though, for each graduate student there will be donated money and prestige points, which can be spent to further improve the institution.
Attack or Defense? Close or Distance?
A real school for heroes wouldn't be such if it didn't include some good practice lessons too, right? Perfect, so here comes the second phase of the game, the one dedicated to playable quests with our students. These are short sessions lasting a maximum of about 10 minutes, where we will use a party made up of four characters, following the Hack and Slash modalities. Finding a kidnapped farmer, killing a certain number of monsters or defeating the feared dragon inside a cave, these are in summary the types of missions that we will be able to face, using any of the party characters at will, while the others will be controlled by the 'IA.
Too bad that after having completed a dozen, all the others prove to be essentially mere repetitions with some variations, making the remaining quests that we are going to unlock repetitive in the long run. Expedition missions are also available, during which we will choose four students to be sent away for a certain amount of time and who will passively carry out the assigned task, then return with rewards and experience. Despite the different classes present guarantee a certain differentiation, exploiting them for the usual missions seemed to us a real waste, really a pity.
Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story turned out to be a real discovery, a pleasant dive into a magical world that fans of classic RPGs cannot fail to appreciate. Just as anyone who has got their hands on a Theme Hospital or on a management software of the same caliber cannot fail to be infected by the desire to enlarge and expand their school more and more. The only really negative note lies in the quests to be played in first person, which on the one hand give a good dose of fun thanks to their simplicity, on the other hand they are repetitive and boring after a few hours of play. However, we would like to recommend this Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story, also given its budget price, with the hope that the developers decide to bring a sequel.
► Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story is an Adventure-Indie-RPG-Simulation-Strategy game published by PQube for Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 28/09/2018 The version for PC came out on 02/10/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 02/10/2018
