Developer: ACQUIRE, Zero Div
Publisher: PQube
Platform: Switch (2), PS5, PC
Tested on: Switch 2
Class of Heroes 3 Remaster – Review
Last year, PQube brought the classic dungeon-crawling series Class of Heroes to modern platforms with Class of Heroes: Anniversary Edition and Class of Heroes 2G: Remaster Edition. The return of these games marked the end of a decade-long absence of the series, but there was still a major elephant in the room: Class of Heroes 3. While that game saw some success on the PSP in Japan, it never made it over to the West. A localized release was planned for PS3 in 2018, but ultimately ended up being cancelled. With the arrival of Class of Heroes 3 Remaster, fans of the series can finally discover what they’ve been missing out on. If you’re anything like us, however, you might be unfamiliar with the series in general, although we did play the spinoff game Adventure Academia. Is Class of Heroes 3 Remaster a good entry point for newcomers, or is this the kind of title that just preaches to the choir?
Story
Technically speaking, Class of Heroes 3 does have a story, but it’s paper-thin and serves as little more than a barebones framework for the game’s dungeon-crawling action. The premise is that you are a student at a school for heroes. There are three schools to choose from, but it doesn’t really matter which one you pick, as the narrative will play out in the same way regardless, and the cast of characters is forgettable and interchangeable. Things start out normal enough, with you and a group of students taking on quests from teachers and faculty, until you’re eventually drawn into a larger conflict with an apocalyptic evil that the school forgot to mention upfront. It’s your typical good-vs-evil story with no real depth. With the cast embodying stereotypical anime tropes and showing no character growth, it’s difficult to really care about what happens to them. To make matters worse, the story doesn’t adapt to the in-game relationship system or your party’s dynamics, with links between characters being a purely mechanical element, not a narrative one.
Graphics
The bright, anime-style visuals are perhaps the most appealing aspect of Class of Heroes 3. While the students embody a wide variety of fantasy races, including Elves and Halflings, their designs don’t necessarily match the way they are typically depicted. Dwarves, for example, don’t look like they do in The Lord of the Rings here, but are anthropomorphic animals instead. Character portraits are distinct and charming, and there is a limited opportunity to customize your self-inserted student. There is also a wide visual variety when it comes to the dungeon environments, with forests, deserts, and ruins all making an appearance. That said, the word “Remaster” in the title does a lot of heavy lifting here, with the game’s roots as a PSP title being very much visible when it comes to the game’s graphics. Everything that isn’t a 2D illustration looks dated, with dungeons suffering from low-res textures and a surprisingly shoddy framerate. Attack animation effects are underwhelming, and portraits are unsurprisingly very static, both in combat and in story scenes.
Sound
The way Class of Heroes 3 embraces tropey characters is pushed even further with the game’s voice acting. The game only offers Japanese voice acting, and even then, it isn’t fully voiced. The voice cast leans heavily into the one-dimensional personalities of the characters, with exaggerated, hammy performances. Contrasting this is the game’s soundtrack. While the music is varied and fits the different scenes and environments, it isn’t exactly memorable, serving as little more than functional background noise. At least it doesn’t get repetitive over time. Sound effects and ambience are mostly serviceable and don’t stand out either.
Gameplay
Like its predecessors, Class of Heroes 3 is a first-person dungeon crawler JRPG, in the same vein as the Etrian Odyssey games. The game’s hero-training school setting ties into the gameplay: tutorials are disguised as classes that you attend, and the school itself acts as a hub area where you can manage your party, use alchemy, and spend your earnings in shops. From the school, you set out to labyrinthian dungeons, where you explore, fight monsters, and grind for loot and XP. Upon completing a dungeon, you return to the school, upgrade your party, and then set out on the next quest.
Your dungeon-crawling party can contain up to six characters. With a wide variety of races and classes at your disposal, this gives you a ton of different options to explore and strategies to try out in the game’s turn-based battles. On top of this, you create a web of relationships between characters, deciding who likes or dislikes each other. This affects synergy attacks, buffs, and debuffs in battle. It’s a neat idea in theory, although as we mentioned earlier, it doesn’t tie into the narrative aspects of the game, and could’ve used more depth. Battles involve setting different commands, including attack and magic, and then watching everything resolve. With enemies appearing in rows of up to 18, and no way to automate or speed up battles, fights are lengthy and repetitive affairs, however. It doesn’t help that dungeon exploration is a tedious affair too. Early-game dungeons are simple enough, but later ones are larger and more complex, with traps and hidden tricks. Initially, there is no minimap to refer to, and you’ll need to unlock it, which adds more frustration. Add in severe difficulty spikes that require hours of grinding to overcome, and the result is something that simply isn’t fun to play.
Everything about Class of Heroes 3’s core gameplay design feels archaic. While this will probably appeal to a niche of hardcore old-school dungeon-crawling fans, this approach will be a turn-off for most players. On paper, Class of Heroes 3 offers an incredibly generous package in terms of content, with three different schools, tons of classes, and a wide variety of unlockables. Each school route takes around 40 hours to complete, adding up to well over 100 hours of content if you engage with everything. However, said content is so dense and grind-heavy that unless you are in the very specific niche that Class of Heroes 3 targets, you simply won’t get your €29.99 worth of enjoyment out of it.
Conclusion
It’s safe to say that Class of Heroes 3 didn’t convince us of the series’ merit. This is a niche title for a very specific audience. To its credit, the game very much sticks to its design roots as a mid-2010s PSP title, but over the last decade, audience expectations have evolved. Fans of yesteryear’s dungeon-crawling experience will find a dense, punishing playground here, but anyone looking for a more modern, streamlined experience is better off elsewhere.
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