13/01/2015

Class of Heroes (1): Interesting yet uninspired



This had to happen: my first ever first-person dungeon crawler—but certainly not the last, perish the thought. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself there. The reason why I never explored that RPG subgenre’s subterranean and cut-throat paths is pretty simple: kick-started by the Wizardry series in the early ’80s into a brief burst of fame, the first-person dungeon crawler subsequently fell out of fashion before I was old enough to enjoy it properly. It became even less that a niche, with games released so sporadically that one could be forgiven for missing them and thinking that the genre had died entirely. Things remained that way until, by a sweet twist of fate, this special brand of dungeon-crawling was rekindled in the late ’00s on portable systems. En passant, it’s interesting and heart-warming to see how, in two decades, the portable gaming industry went from being a watered-down alternative to the home consoles to becoming a lively Noah’s Ark for all kinds of niche genres—it’s good be a handheld gamer nowadays, indeed. But I digress. This late revival of the first-person dungeon crawler was initiated by two separate franchises: Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS and Class of Heroes on the PSP, which I’m going to cover here. 
   
Developed by Acquire and released in 2008(jp) and 2009(na), Class of Heroes can be described as a kawaii and moe-infused take on the Wizardry series, in which the dark fantasy art is replaced by colourful anime sprites. The game quickly became quite popular in its home country, as well as the de facto foundation of a whole new series: three sequels and a spin-off were released on several platforms between 2009 and 2012, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the series head to the Vita in the next years. 

Seen from the West, the Japanese success story of this first instalment is quite puzzling. Class of Heroes was not exactly welcomed with open arms by North-American reviewers, who collectively granted it the mediocre score of 61 on Metacritic and 60.45 on Gamerankings. And after playing it myself, my stance goes as such: Class of Heroes is an interesting and potentially addictive game that is unfortunately marred by a couple of annoying practical issues and a problematic lack of inspiration bordering on blatant laziness. It’s a pity and a shame, for there was a lot of goodness there, as we’ll see right now.

A gambling roaming fest

Class can be praised for revamping the genre to some extent and giving good ol’ first-person dungeon crawler an unexpected twist. This twist is not to be found in the school setting, as one may have expected—or feared: indeed, that setting is nothing more than a mere context element, and there is really not much to it beyond fancy denominations—classes being called “majors”, for instance— and sailor outfits in lieu of sturdy armours. The real twist lies in the combination of two factors that constitute the very core of Class, namely Exploration First and Random Stats.  

Let’s first tackle Exploration First. As this denomination abundantly implies, exploring dungeons—or Labyrinths as they are called in Class—is the primary purpose of the game. Nothing too surprising here, given that Class is a dungeon crawler; however, exploration has been made incredibly easier and more convenient that in your average dungeon crawler. Everything is designed so that you can enjoy your exploring sessions to the fullest: hindrances typical of the genre have been neatly excised and replaced by features that make your roaming quite comfortable and pleasurable. Without further ado, here are the most prominent ones:

—The game boasts an instant save system that is an absolute blessing. Not only can you save at any moment, be it one square away from a mighty boss, but you can also create as many save files as your memory card can stomach: what’s not to love? This save system completely eradicates the fear of losing your hard-earned progression, thus making way for a much more relaxed brand of exploration that lets you experiment to your heart’s content. 

—The random encounter rate is tailor-made for exploration. In fact, it is one of the most perfect random encounter rates I’ve ever been treated to: you meet foes often enough to level-up smoothly and regularly and seldom enough to explore in peace and discover large chunks of dungeons at once. The balance is absolutely top-notch and undoubtedly one of the highlights of Class. Random encounters somehow always seem to happen precisely at the right moment, offering a welcome diversion from exploration and a pleasant burst of adrenaline; and providing that you never run away from them, you should always be powerful enough to tackle any challenge coming your way. 

—All the maps can be purchased at various shops for a reasonable price, and they fill themselves automatically as you progress through the Labyrinths. This is a much more forgiving approach than the one favoured in Etrian Odyssey, and it allows you to focus solely on moving forward, confident that any space you clear will appear on the map—along with traps, warp tiles, magic doors, portals and the like. There is even better: once you explore a specific floor layout, it is explored for good, and will be shown as such when it reappears in another Labyrinth—providing that you own the map of the said Labyrinth. 

Let’s now explore the second facet of the twist, namely the Random Stats. To implement such a feature is a bold move that is not so often encountered in the realm of RPG where level-grinding usually reigns supreme, and Class takes it to a level that I’ve never witnessed before. For, lo and behold: all the stats in that game are random. From your base HP and MP to the amount of XP and money you gain from battle, without forgetting foes’ HP, every single stat you’re bound to encounter in Class is subject to random variations, which transforms that apparently innocuous dungeon-crawler into a gambling game in disguise. Apart from originality value, this feature has drastic consequences on the gameplay: it dramatically undermines the importance of level-grinding and makes it somehow superfluous. Here are a couple of revelatory examples:

—When you create a new character, you’re granted a certain number of so-called “Bonus Points” that you must allocate to various base stats in order to gain access to the class of your choice. You may think that this number of points is fixed, but it is in fact totally random. The lowest number of Bonus Points I’ve been allotted was 6, which grants access to a couple of basic classes; the highest was 35, which grants access to virtually every single class. If your keep creating characters until you get a conveniently high number of Bonus Points, you can easily gain access to your class of choice from the get-go, which is incredibly neat—all the more so as changing classes is quite tedious. But more on that later. 

—If you find yourself struggling against a boss, you don’t need to level-grind the slightest bit like in more conventional RPGs. Instead, you can simply keep tackling that fight over and over until you get a stroke of luck, i.e. a version of the boss with pitiful stats. I once faced a boss that wiped me out after ten turns of arduous fighting; the next try, I took that same boss down in two neat turns. It’s all about persevering until luck humours you.

—When you gain levels, your stats can be either raised or lowered, and you’re granted a random amount of extra HP. If you’re not happy with what you get, it only takes a quick reload and another try to reap more rewards from your leveling-up. 

This combination of Exploration First and Random Stats works like a charm. The random nature of the stats is a tongue-in-cheek move that pleasantly defuses the importance of level-grinding; it allows you to approach the game in a much more relaxed way and reinforces the focus on exploration, which itself is as smooth and comfortable as it can be. At its best, the game is beautifully addictive and offers a flowing experience in which you simply can’t get enough of roaming the dungeons while testing your luck. Indeed, my sessions of Class often stretched beyond their initially planned boundaries, as I found myself riveted by the game and unable to stop myself from exploring just a trifle more.

Alas, also a dragging fest

Unfortunately, Class is not always at its aforementioned best. Despite its undeniable goodness, it is also weighed down by a number of blatant issues that seriously undermine the pleasure one can derive from playing it. Lo and behold, here are the joy-killers: 

—The Labyrinths are horrendously bland, to the point of being seriously depressing. For one thing, a lot of them are unexplainably dark, offering lighting only on the tile in front of you and leaving the rest of the room in a complete murk. I have no idea if such a design choice was based on a lack of funds or on the desire to give the Labyrinths an aura of threatening mystery; but at any rate, the result is quite depressing, and more disheartening than threatening. For another, the Labyrinths are miserably empty: there is hardly any scenery element to break the monotony of the smooth walls and floors, and hardly any chest to ransack; to add insult to injury, the few chests available contain only trinkets, or nothing at all—so much for the promise of precious treasures hidden in the depths of cut-throat dungeons. Last but not least comes the major issue of the background tiles: there are only a few of them, recycled over and over again in all the Labyrinths with just a couple of tweaks here and there to create the illusion that this is a totally different place altogether. Unfortunately, the player is not blind, and the trick doesn’t work in the slightest. Add to this dreadful picture the fact that the music is non-existent, consisting in only a couple of random notes that could make the lamest elevator music sound like a Bach sonata, and you get a shockingly dull and disheartening roaming experience that will bore the life out of everyone but the most dedicated dungeon-crawler aficionado.

—Changing classes is tedious and reaps more inconveniences than rewards. The main issue is that unlike in games like Dragon Quest IX, the abilities you learn when donning a given class are not saved when you switch to a different class; only a limited number of spells can be maintained, depending on how many spells can be mastered by the new class you’re donning. This is already stinging, but there is worse: if you switch back to your original class, your hard-learned abilities are not handed back to you à la Dragon Quest, nor is your HP; instead, you basically restart from scratch. On top of all that infamy, your HP is divided by two every time you change classes, which is just discouraging. If you combine this with the fact that the encounter rate is actually too low to level-grind efficiently, you get a very neat case of fake longevity that can only appeal to the most masochistic gamer. All in all, the changing class process is so bothersome that I really wish it wouldn’t have been implemented at all; it gives you a false sense of security by letting you believe that any ill-advised choice in the class department can be amended later without too much hassle, which couldn’t be further away from the truth. Class change should be facile and rewarding, or not be at all, period. 

—Some of the Labyrinth floors cannot be explored at all unless you're able to “Levitate”—i.e. make your character(s) hover above the ground, be it by way of an item, a spell or an innate ability. The problem is that the game never lets you know that Levitating is mandatory, not even in a veiled way. Now, maybe this is some kind of inside joke known to all first-person dungeon crawler veterans; but as a newcomer to the genre, I discovered it the hard way and I was none too pleased with that. To make matters worse, only a couple of classes can learn “Levitas”, the spell that allows you to perform that mighty task, and only three races (Erdgeist, Sprite and Celestian) possess the innate ability to do it; as for the item that lets you levitate, it must be synthesised and the main component is incredibly hard to find. (So hard, in fact, that I never found it.) Given that nearly all the floors of the latter Labyrinths require the use of the Levitation ability to be explored, it’s incredibly easy to find yourself stranded with a party that cannot perform the deed as you’re approaching the end of the game. Combine this with the impractical class change and you get an apocalyptic combo that can break the will of anyone but the most seasoned dungeon-crawler veteran.

When all is said and done, Class of Heroes is very much an average game. It has its highlights and offers a solid and enjoyable dungeon-roaming experience, but it’s also painfully uninspired and cumbersome to the point of being punishing. And yet, I poured thirty hours into that game without even noticing it, and would have poured even more if not for the difficulty spike at the end of the game—on which I’ll expand in my next post. The fact that I could become so engrossed in such a passable game can only mean one thing: I found myself a new favourite RPG subgenre! And indeed, I’m dying to try more first-person dungeon crawlers, starting with the ones I already own. As for Class of Heroes, I’d like to think that I will come back to it later, for there are many things left to discover and experiment with; however, the thought of roaming these barren, barely lit dungeons again makes me feel all gloomy and depressed. Maybe I need to let some time pass first. A lot of time. 

I will give a thorough account of my run in my next post, as well as a couple of useful tips that I learned during my trips through the Labyrinths. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

No comments:

Post a Comment