Class of Heroes is an old-school dungeon crawler RPG that is light on plot and heavy on level grinding, party management and cycling through menus. Fans of the genre will surely find something to love here as there are over 75 labyrinths (the game’s dungeons) to explore and 400 items to collect and create, but those seeking an engaging plot, character development, action, or any other modern RPG elements should look elsewhere.
Class of Heroes is set in a fantastical world where numerous labyrinths have appeared throughout the land, and stories of treasure and monsters emerged with them. Adventurers naturally want to explore these mysterious areas, which is why you and your party enroll and train at Particus Academy, the main hub where you rest, learn how to play the game, buy equipment and activate new quests.
Enrolling at Particus is a lot like enrolling in a real school — you will explore the campus, meet the faculty, sign up for orientation and attend “classes,” only here it’s with 100% more menus to scroll through. Attending classes basically means reading through a bunch of tutorials on how to play, and are very necessary for newcomers to this type of game.
The faculty at Particus is nicely designed and has unique personalities, but sadly, there is no voice acting in Class of Heroes, just lots of dull text to read through which takes up a lot of time when starting the game.
Players are required to create and enroll a party of six characters in the academy at the beginning of the game. There are premade level-2 characters to select from, which are a huge help, but players can also create level-one characters from scratch, so you can start your own party from the ground up if you wish.
There are ten races to choose from, male or female, which leaves a total of 20 possible characters to create. They’re further divided by alignment and “major,” which is basically the character’s job class. These can be changed later on in the game, too, which adds some cool depth to them, but I found most of them just too similar looking to be interesting. They can be tough to discern from each other in gameplay, too, since you can’t customize how they look and you never see more than their static icon on screen, instead of them ever fighting which was hard for me to get used to.
Exploring the appropriately named labyrinths is where you’ll spend the bulk of the game, which can be an absolute nightmare without a map, so make sure you have one with you beforehand – they can be given or purchased at the school shops.
Exploration is done in first person and movement is grid-based as you move one square at a time. The graphics throughout are pretty bland and unsatisfying, with the only good sense of style and design being the characters and faculty, which are hurt since they are not animated and never actually speak.
Combat is handled through menus, again, when you encounter an enemy’s static sprite in the dungeons. They pop up and your command window will be brought up in the lower right hand side of the display, and from there you choose how to fight and defend in turn-based combat glory.
Having your party in strategic formation (strong melee-based fighters should be up front and ranged/spell-casters in the back) is crucial, but even in the beginning combat is tough and you will likely get your ass handed to you.
The sound and music throughout the game is mediocre at best, especially in the dungeons, but the title theme is pretty nice. So in all, the sound effects aren’t anything special but get the job done.
Still, there’s no denying that Class of Heroes has tremendous depth, and will appeal to the niche of RPG fans who love old-school level grinding, turn-based menu combat, creating spells and items and party management.
Fans of games from Atlus, and games like The Dark Spire and Etrian Odyssey will likely dig Class of Heroes and should pick this up as they will likely get the most out of it, but everyone else should stay clear. For them there’s nothing really compelling enough to warrant more than some light dabbling, which would be pointless with a game like this.
