Class of Heroes - old-school done oh-so wrong

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:42 am

Think of every hypen in the topic title here as a minus sign. A sign that indicates a lack of something. In this case, a lack of fun. I hate to say this, because I love Atlus and really want to support them, but this game is the rather ironic opposite of Eltrian Odyssey. Whereas EO managed to get most things that people liked about classic 3D dungeon games together in one nice little package, Class of Heroes gets it all horribly wrong.

Let me start with the small number of plusses real quick: the art quality is really good, there are a lot of classes & races, and Atlus has done their usual nice job with the translation. This is where the nice things end.

Let's start with the lack of a good start in the game, since that seems appropriate. This game offers virtually no explanation of what the hell is going on or what you can - or are supposed - to do. There's a dungeon. You can explore it. To do that, you need characters. You can make them. Have fun.

How do you find out how to gain spells to cast? You don't. How do you know that, despite the fact that most of the time you only get 8-10 bonus points, you can get up to 40 (!) just by canceling and making a new character again? You don't. How do you know that you need to carry a map into a dungeon for the auto-map to be usable at all? You - that's right - don't. The game tries to cough up a few tutorials in the form of quests, but they don't help much. In fact, the tutorials about character creation probably will frustrate you even more, as you'll probably have wasted time making a party only to be informed that you made bad choices.

So let's get on to the actual dungeon exploration. If this was good, then all could still be forgiven. But it's so mind-numbingly boring that I'm yawning just thinking about it. The maps are all roughly the same size, with no music, and packed to the brim with random encounters. The monsters drop random treasure. Yay.

Oh, the fact that they drop random treasure will anger you right off the bat. The second basic quest requires you to get a "rare" coin by fighting. I did this in about 10 minutes the first time but ended up forgetting to save when I realized that I totally borked my character creation. The second time I did this it took me over 90 minutes to get a goddamn coin.

And it was 90 minutes of hell. The combat in this game moves slower than a Segway whose engine was stolen by gremlins. No matter how fast you hit the X button, the menus just clunk by. Then the round starts. The round consists of pointless grunts and clanks with "whoosh" lines drawn onscreen. Let me also point out that at level 1 your back row characters probably cannot attack (no matter how hard they try) and only one class starts with attack magic. So you'll have a party of six fighting - three of whom will just be random bystanders for the first few hours - and what do you fight? Why, your garden-variety low-level RPG crap of course. Yellow bees, green crickets, blue bees, red crickets, bronze spare change, silver spare change, gold spare chage - I kid you not. This game brings out the droll pallet-swaps right away. You also fight some plates with skulls on them. And there's three different colors of the flatware right off the bat too. Joy.

Walking around the dungeon is about as unexciting as possible too. You plod around gobs of me-too bland hallways and can't run to move things along (at least, as far as I can tell you can't). Did I mention that there seems to be NO WAY to tell when there's a trap? Did you just walk over an electrified floor? Oops, sucks to be you. Or maybe you got unlucky and got the worlds most asinine level 1 dungeon ever - the maps you go through on the outer parts of dungeons are randomly selected (but not randomly generated).

I got one which was a series of straight corridors filled with about 14 doors each. If you picked the wrong door, you got sent to the beginning of the dungeon. If you picked the right one, congratufuckinlations - you get to go to the NEXT ROW. Pick wrong there and start all over again. Yes, there are random encounters in this area. I'm not kidding. This is potentially the first piece of "excitement" you'll get in this game. All my hope that I had clung to over all the crap in this game starved to death after I abandoned it in those stupid door-filled halls.

I really, really wanted to like this game. Or at least not to hate it. But it manages to take all the bad parts of Wizardry - the fact that you have to pay to rest (WHY!?!?), the "you die and resurrection might fail" mechanics, the utter lack of a plot (actually, this game manages to have even less plot than Wizardry 1), the bland encounters... and doesn't spice it up with anything other than some nice still art. It's boring, it's drab, and despite the fact that I hear this game is really long and could thus potentially offer a lot of playtime for your money, it's all a pointless, drab, droll, frustrating grindfest.

Don't waste your time.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 1:16 pm

I've been curious about this one because it is clearly a wizardry clone, and the screen shots have that wizardry 6-8 look to them (the most interesting period for Wizardry and the one ignored by Japan), but some of the initial previews I've seen suggest the game is really lackluster.

So, is this game worse than wizardry, or are you put off by it because it IS like wizardry?

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 6:58 pm

Could be the latter, and quit blaming the publisher for caring.

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:27 am

CMoon wrote:I've been curious about this one because it is clearly a wizardry clone, and the screen shots have that wizardry 6-8 look to them (the most interesting period for Wizardry and the one ignored by Japan), but some of the initial previews I've seen suggest the game is really lackluster.

So, is this game worse than wizardry, or are you put off by it because it IS like wizardry?

I've got mixed feelings on this, but this is probably the closest game to the original Wizardry I've played in a long time.

Reasons I'd say it's worse:

- Combat moves really slow (well, not as slow as the old PC version of Wizardry where you had to type the spell names, but I believe it's slower than the console versions)
- The dungeon maps are uninspired compared to Wizardry
- Functionality of some classes seems unclear, whereas in Wizardry every class had a more definite purpose

Reasons I'd say it's better:

- Better art
- Not as punishingly difficult at lower levels
- Has more quests so you have a little more variety (Wizardry didn't officially have quests per-say, but it did have things that functioned like quests where doing a series of related things on a floor/between floors got you a reward)

----------

That all said, this feels too much like a 28 year old game for me to consider recommending it. It feels more like Wizardry 1-3 than 6 & 7. (I never played 8.)

robthebanks · Post by **robthebanks** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:27 am

bummer. I was stoked on this... Will probably give it a try, but oh well...

Gwyrgyn Blood · Post by **Gwyrgyn Blood** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:11 pm

Cthulhu wrote: (I never played 8.)

What is wrong with you?

Seriously though, what do you think of this in comparison to Dark Spire?

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:22 pm

Gwyrgyn Blood wrote:
Seriously though, what do you think of this in comparison to Dark Spire?

Ha! You beat me to that question. Personally, I'd like to see something in the way of a good traditional Wizardry-type game, but I wish someone had been paying attention to 6 and 7. 7 in particular may be one of the best non-JRPGS of all time.

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:56 pm

CMoon wrote:
Gwyrgyn Blood wrote:
Seriously though, what do you think of this in comparison to Dark Spire?
Ha! You beat me to that question. Personally, I'd like to see something in the way of a good traditional Wizardry-type game, but I wish someone had been paying attention to 6 and 7. 7 in particular may be one of the best non-JRPGS of all time.

I'm playing Class of Heroes currently but I'm not too far in. It's pretty fun, but seems to take all the things that make Wizardry feel old (fiddly class system with annoying requirements, fatal combat, slow start) and none of the things that make it great, or rather, the things that made Wizardry 7 great (expansive world with lots of quests and NPCs, cool setting, open storyline, but still with an old school flare).

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:54 am

Gwyrgyn Blood wrote:
Cthulhu wrote: (I never played 8.)
What is wrong with you?

Seriously though, what do you think of this in comparison to Dark Spire?

I don't remember exactly why I didn't play 8 - there was some reason I wasn't able to get it when it came out, and I moved to Japan for a year not too long afterwards. So ... there you have it.

I bought Dark Spire but I haven't played it yet. Etrian Odyssey is my pick for a recently(ish) released Wizardry-like game that I totally loved. Going back a bit further, I thought Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land / Wizardry Busin were incredibly cool. Even if they gave you a good Ninja right off the bat.

Andi wrote:I'm playing Class of Heroes currently but I'm not too far in. It's pretty fun, but seems to take all the things that make Wizardry feel old (fiddly class system with annoying requirements, fatal combat, slow start) and none of the things that make it great, or rather, the things that made Wizardry 7 great (expansive world with lots of quests and NPCs, cool setting, open storyline, but still with an old school flare).

Strongly agree in pretty much every way.

Gwyrgyn Blood · Post by **Gwyrgyn Blood** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:45 pm

I personally think 8 is the best of the series (along with TotFL) but then I never got a chance to play the originals back when they were new so I'm probably biased a bit.

I didn't like EO that much because the maps were very bland and I always ran out of map to explore before I ran out of grinding that needed doing. I liked Dark Spire better in this regard, but then Dark Spire took on some of the opposite problems, like completely fucking obscure ways to progress the story along that you can easily overlook unless you cover over the entire dungeon twice.

And as unbalanced as some skills are in EO, Dark Spire is a lot worse because basically after floor 5, physical hits become completely worthless and magic is the only way to attack. DS also has the issue where if you get surprised (which happens something like 25% of the time) by a group with breath attacks (hello Venom Dragons) you basically get wiped without a single turn.

I kind of still like DS a little better just because it's much faster and I like the presentation better, and the dungeon is a little more interesting overall.

maxlords · Post by **maxlords** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 5:21 am

Huh...I bought Class of Heroes...but I think I'm gonna return it now. Bummer.

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:19 am

maxlords wrote:Huh...I bought Class of Heroes...but I think I'm gonna return it now. Bummer.

Even though I really didn't like it much (obviously) I'd recommend reading the comments of the others here before making a final decision.