Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story review for Switch

About Games, Review, Switch Game Reviews & Impressions 2 comments

Game: Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story
System: Switch/ PS4
Developer: Agaté Studio
Publisher: PQube
Age Rating: 10+ (America)|
Price: $14.99 |£ 11.99 |€ 12,99
Release Date: 2 October 2018
(The game is also available on PS4 and Steam)

Overall Feeling: I like it!

Review Code kindly provided PQube

Valthirian Arc is a RPG/management game made by Agate. Originally it was funded on Kickstarter under the name of Valthirian Arc: Red Covenant – Academy for Heroes. 591 backers funded $ 31,414 but the funding didn’t reach any further. That meant that the stretch goals weren’t financed. No voice acting for all major NPC’s and students in combat, no opportunity to adopt pets, no animated portraits for all NPC’s. But, the main game got made. First released on Steam, and now the game has come to Switch and PS4.

Ever wonder where the heroes come from?

Let’s look at the background story. Valthiria is a country formed by the alliance of Five Queendoms : Red Valthiria in the North, Green in South, East Blue, White in Northwest and Black Valthiria in the West of the land. The five queendoms all bow down to their queen, Her Majesty Queen Hilda. It’s a peaceful land where people live together in harmony.

Queen Hilda’s husband used to be the principal at the Hero School, but has stepped down to be with his wife. And it’s up to you to take over. Sadly Queen Hilda passes away, and her only heiress, Princess Isabella has disappeared. When the news spread, the five Queendoms begun their political fight for the rights to inherit the land. Nice touch, the main characters are all female!

By oath, you have a neutral political position. Expanding on the school and making it bigger and better will give you the position to keep the other queens in check until Isabella is found. And that’s what you do in the game. Train students, take on quest after quest. Making sure you help each queen out in equal measure. And make sure you are ready for any struggle to come.

School management in action

The introduction and the tutorial are good, a lot of text is presented so you have to play attention. You start out with a small school and only a handful of students. I had hoped to have a game where you could really enter the school. However, the player hovers over the school, and there’s no roof impeding your sight. This makes me feel less involved in the school business.
In a way, the building part of the game is like you are playing a town builder on your mobile device. Building extra classrooms, a library or cafeteria. And later in the game, building the knightly quarter, maginary for the mages and scouts gauntlet and so on. The movement of the cursor over the field isn’t working very well, I find it hard to be precise and find the right angle to look at things.
Every now and then you see a question mark or exclamation mark in one of the class rooms. It will give you a choice in teaching your students: giving them a sudden test, scolding them for being late etc. However, I have found no effect of my choices in the game. Plus, the choices are very repetitive. You wouldn’t believe how many times the student lose their wallet!
The way you manage the school and its buildings does have an influence: it influences the stats on your quests adding defence points, extra power, extra dexterity etc. Plus, maintaining the school is a matter of finances and school ranking as well. Be sure to make enough money and enough experience points to level the school up. Because then the game opens up more, let’s you upgrade rooms and build additional buildings like a farm.
Which is another reason why I feel the school part is more of a city builder kind of game. Building a farm is quickly done, and after that you get rewarded by more money for missions. So that’s all there is in the school management part of the game: building, upgrading and managing.

Making sure the students are the best

Students find your school themselves, to be enrolled by you as long as you have enough dormitory space. You can’t change the students’ features, they come in all sorts and sizes. Put them in a party (there are three) and level them up as you see fit. Once they have reached level 10, they can train to be a knight, a mage or a scout and level up on that job. Eventually, more skills and levels are unlocked.
Make sure you forge the best weapons and armour in the armoury, using the scrap metal and other material you find in the dungeons. Tweaking your students and parties is good fun, it’s the part I enjoyed very much. Lots of weaponry, many levels and skills, lots of accessories and jobs they can learn. Making the best party is fun to do.

Shining on the battlefield

Your missions are detailed on a world map. The missions originate from one of the kingdoms, identified by a banner. Some are errands: you can send your team away on these without having to interfere. A nice way for them to get experience. I do wish though that there were more opportunities to send them out on their own. For the most part, you are the one doing the fighting with them.

The RPG part, and customising your party, is my most favourite part. The dungeons could be more varied, the monsters too. And again, the camera doesn’t always go where I want it to. The fighting is hectic, to be honest I just hack about trying to best the monsters. Levelling your students up this way is a must: I have found that soon the missions are three stars or more in difficulty, and it seems like a big leap. Fighting was a walk in the park, and then all of a sudden I started losing!
It takes some patience, some tweaking, and making sure your favourite students have the best equipment. Oh, and make sure you don’t accidentally graduate them: every semester you have to let at least one student go and be a hero in the wide world.

Conclusion

Valthirian Arc isn’t the simulation game I expected: no decorating, no customising and you play it from a viewpoint above the layout of the school. That makes it feel like a city builder on mobile. But the RPG part, working with your parties of students, doing quests: that’s what I really like in the game.

The soundtrack is nice, especially in the battles. And the NPC’s look good, though they are static. It’s a game you can fairly easy pick up and play, and leave it again. I wish there were more errands in the missions where one of my teams could go and fight without me. That way the levelling up would be a bit easier. Especially when all of a sudden the difficulty of the missions is upped.

I have included some of my gameplay below. Although I clearly am not without critique, I do find myself going back to Valthirian Arc, again and again. Just one more mission, just one more adjustment to my team. So that’s why I can only say I like it!

 
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2 comments

  1. Awesome. I’ve had my eye on this one so it’s great to find a review – there aren’t many out there at all even though as you mentioned this already came out on Steam. Definitely a game I’m strongly considering getting, looks like fun. My impression from the trailer was “JK Rowling legal action bait”, but that’s not exactly a bad thing from a player perspective. In fact I’m surprised there aren’t more games where you run a school!

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