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!
