Some thoughts and details on my last Gamefly rental, Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story.
The player, no name given, is selected to become the new principal of a school after the previous one stepped down, and must raise it and it's students to be the best it can be.
There's more going on behind the scenes, however, as the queen is getting on in years and without an heir, as her daughter has gone missing, with queens of other kingdoms vying for her throne.
To bring the school back up to good condition, the Principal(as they're always referred to in-game after getting the position) must recruit students, raise them and send them off to work for the kingdom after graduating them, construct the school's facilities, and raise the school's reputation to help with all of the above.
At the school section, it plays like a simulation game, with teachers and enrolled/ready to be enrolled students wandering the campus, where you can:
- Check a Tasklist, which will give you rewards for certain goals, such as changing into a class for the first time or clearing certain Missions
- Enroll or reject students waiting to enroll.
- Check the Graduation request once it arrives.
- Build facilities
- Forge equipment
- Check on the students and get them ready for missions/class change them/graduate them
- Send the students out on missions.
Like other simulation games, there'll be a cursor to move and select with here. It moves pretty fast, though, and it's speed can't be changed, so this part might be easier to play on PC.
As you increase the school's renown, it'll Rank Up, giving you more room for facilities, more facilities that can be built, and higher level caps for students. The highest rank for the school is A.
The various facilities/buildings(which can also be upgraded, with some exceptions) for the academy can provide boosts/buffs in battle missions, such as Classrooms, which give you more experience(and I highly recommend building/upgrading as many of these as possible).
At the forge, you can use Scrap and other materials to craft weapons and accessories, though you need a recipe first. Those can be found ither as drops from enemies or from the traveling salesman. When crafting, you can also add on a few components from the building materials to further boost them by having up to random 3 stats get an increase during the crafting.
Speaking of the traveling salesman, Shilekka, she pops up every few weeks, then leaves after a couple weeks as well. She sells you crafting materials, base weapons(no boosts) and recipes. I recommend at least buying out her crafting materials every time she arrives, as they can go quick if you craft a lot.
While looking around the campus, small '?' may appear at different rooms/facilities. Clicking on them while the ? is there will have a small text event happen, some with choices, that may give you a small reward or not, such as choosing to turn in or keep a lost student wallet, or getting funds for the school from doing well.
As the school gains floors, you can hit L1/R1 to switch between which are shown to see if any ? events are there or to just watch the students and teachers wandering around.
Though starting small, and apparently lacking a roof(which I thought was a joke at first because of how simulation games work, but may actually be true), once it's fully ranked up, the academy and campus can look pretty impressive.
There's a class system for the students, starting from 'Apprentice':
You can't Promote classes right away, however; you need to progress the story and do missions that have you recruit Mentors for those classes, and also need to construct a room/facility for them in the school before you can finally change students' classes.
Each class has it's own weapon type, though a few overlap with their promotion line.
The initial student level cap is 10, and rises as the school improves, however it won't change the cap of students currently enrolled/ready to enroll.
Each class learns skills that can be passed on when they class change. It needs to be done manually, though, as the ones gained from leveling up aren't learned automatically. As the level cap is 10 at the start, they won't be able to learn them all at that point(Apprentice's last skill is at 15, Mid Tier Classes' is at 16, and Third Tier Class' is at 25).
Controls for battle sections:
- X to attack or interact
- Circle for a Class specific skill(I think they learn a second one at level 25)
- L1/R1 or the indicated button on the D-Pad to switch between up to 4 party members
Aside from the class specific attack skills for pressing Circle, some skills they learn are passive while others trigger at random, I believe.
There's thankfully no permadeath if the students get KO'd during a quest; they'll revive at the end or if you abandon the mission, and still get any EXP rewarded for clearing it. They won't gain any EXP from enemies that are defeated during the mission after being KO'd, though(any gained beforehand is kept). The Medica class is the only one that can heal the party in battle, and they also learn Revive, but not unless they can reach level 25.
There are two types of missions:
- Ones where you send the students out and control them while they explore, fight, etc., with a set amount of weeks passing while they're away(there's no real penalties for failing a mission, as you'll keep anything you got during it that wasn't related to the story/mission, i.e. experience, money and items, though time will still pass).
- Errand Missions, where you send a team off on their own, and won't return until the set amount of weeks for it have passed, whether they succeeded or failed.
There's no way to make time flow faster, so if you have all currently available students away on Errand Mission, you'll need to wait an agonizingly long time for them to finish if you don't want to cancel their mission(s), especially if their missions are set to take a huge amount of weeks.
At the end of each semester(6 months), you'll be required to have at least 1 student who is at level 10 graduate. You're given certain requests for the graduating student(s), mainly their class or sending more than one, though you can just send any you want I believe. Selecting one early will get you more rewards(money and school renown, even more if the student(s) hit their max level), while selecting on the day of will get you penalized with lower rewards(and I think a student less than 10 will be forced to graduate if none are at 10, though that didn't happen to me). I'd say try to have one ready to send off as early if possible.
Aside from the deadline to get a student ready to graduate, there's no actual time limit, so you can play for as many in-game years as you want, and not have it affect the main story.
The AI is usually good about it, but on occasion, party members or enemies can get caught on the environment. Larger enemies actually seem to end up going above them to pass by, which is amusing if it's trees or the like. XD ...though they can get stuck there and out of range for a bit.
Party members and guests/escort NPCs are 'solid', if that makes sense, so you can't just 'walk through' them on the field, which may cause you to get stuck sometimes, usually on stairs.
There's 3 endings, based on how many missions you did that were affiliated with the Five Queens, the best being from doing all of them, which I got, and the worst from only doing ones that are required(Green Gift, Blue Banquet, Black Brawl, White Wandering, and Red Reception).
Some little tricks I found:
- You can aggro an enemy, then lure it so that it gets mobbed by your other party members while it's focused on you until the aggro wears off.
- If you're at least gaining some experience in missions that you can't beat, I'd say try them over and over to do a small bit of grinding that way, as the two missions clearly meant for grinding, Novice Training I and II, stop being as quick/effective for the higher classes after a while, even with a lot of EXP Boosters.
It took me a bit, but I eventually got into it and enjoyed it overall. It could get repetitive, but also a bit addicting. This wasn't the next game on my queue last time, but I am glad I got to play it.
I hope the sequel improves on the issues I had with this.
Next game being sent is: Granblue Fantasy Versus(they don't have Versus: Rising available to rent yet, unfortunately, so no Anila, darn it)
