Class of Heroes

[briareos_kerensky]

Before diving into the US version of Knights in the Nightmare I wanted to at least give a shot at this...it surely deserves more play time to be fully appreciated, but after a couple of hours in this dungeon crawler I cannot help to think that both chapters of Etrian Odyssey are superior.

Just like any would-be-RPG, party-based, dungeon crawler you have to create some characters to fill in up to 6 available slots. The game gives 10 pre-rolled characters at lvl 2 to start with, but I decided to ignore them and create my own party...not before having robbed them of everything they had (just the basic equipment andd 100 gold each).
I said "pre-rolled" because each time you create a new character the game assigns to him/her a random number of extra stat point for you to freely distribute; you can costumize your character with a name, sex, class (called majors as the game has a high school setting) and alignment.
The first impression is that Class of Heroes wants desperately to be Dungeons & Dragons, with 15 classes, 3 possible alignments (good, neutral and evil) and the aforementioned random stat points.
While I'm all for character customization, the random points system prompts you to re-roll characters until you get 18 or more skill points...while in the pen-and-paper D&D the dungeon master works out something to let characters with poor stats to fight fairly, this is not possible in a dungeon crawler.
Races and alignment further mix themselves with likes and dislikes: for example elves don't like dwarves, drakes aren't particularly well accepted by anyone while Erdgeist are well-liked by everyone; of course evil characters won't get along good characters and so on. This leads to some peculiar combinations, for example an evil white-winged ninja Celestial disliked by his Diabolic companions. From what I've seen races and alignment relationships affect how the party behaves in building up a special attack meter.
Aligment and relationships aren't fixed and can evolve over time and choices you do in the campus or during labyrinth exploration...while it cannot be said that this is true roleplaying, it adds a depth layer to the whole game, but then again I still have to understand that such depth in character creation and classes won't reveal itself as a burden.

Right now, I can say that six slots for your party are a bit too much if you don't stick with a rather standard formation of warriors in the front line and mages in the back. Unlike Etrian Odyssey members in the back cannot attack enemies unless they are equipped with bows or use magic and during the first hours it means that some of them won't get to do much...magics are not limited by magic points but the number of magics that a single character can cast per magic level, much like D&D, so all mages starts off with just 4 attack spells. Even rangers start off with a dagger instead of a more natural bow and won't be able to do anything if placed in the back line.
"Buy a bow then" is probably what you would have thought, but the basic bow costs 3200 gold pieces plus 600 gold for arrows. Recovering HPs by resting at the dormitory costs money, you have to buy a map for every labyrinth you're going into if you don't want to get lost and often torches to lit up dungeons so you'll be able to see walls two-three tiles away.
Items found in the dungeons must be appraised before using them, equipment costs a lot and selling found items won't fetch you much money (selling arrows will give you back only 40 gold pieces)...right now it's hard to go into the dungeon and get money to have my characters healed...I know that these game always have a rough start, but at least both Etrian Odyssey let you soak a bit into the dungeon to get your economy running.

Menus are a bit unintuitive and some basic actions like equipping new items are too tedious: first you have to unequip your current item and then equip the new one; if said item is carried by an other character (inventory is divided between characters) or in the shared item bag, you must first move it and then equip it. Even appraising must be confirmed item by item and you can't sell multiple items at once...menus will really benefit of a more streamlined interface; the good thing is that loading times are short throughout the game except when entering a dungeon, which requires some seconds.

Technically the game doesn't particularly shine: while character design is cleaner than Etrian Odyssey (or than The Dark Spire), it is undoubtely completely shallow, with generic-looking backgrounds and portraits...classes don't have separate sprites but genders and races do, so your female human wizard will always carry a sword; as all characters are students they wear the same uniform that further lessen individual design...it's nice to look at but it's not interesting to do.
Dungeons, too, don't look excessively good: without a torch you just see a small tile of floor and a black void; torches reveal rather mundane-lookign walls that would have looked bad even in Etrian Odyssey.
Dungeons don't have any background music but creepy sound effects are heard here and there and with the limited visual range, this creates a good atmosphere; battles are random and sometimes enemies aren't fully visible, with only a black outline giving out their numbers, so you won't know what you are facing.
The game doesn't allow to pick a specific target, but allows to charactes with long and ranged weapons and magic to chose the line to attack. Now that monsters are weak this works, let's see when more powerful FOEs...I mean, enemies, gang up on you.

As for now Class of Heroes doesn't look particularly hot but maybe I just need to get into it a bit more.

[briareos_kerensky]

Just after posting the first message I realized I haven't fully described the dungeoneering system.
Well, now with a couple more hours under the belt, I can give more impressions on the game.

Moving along dungeons is quite simple: d-pad for movement, L and R for strafe. At each tile you can press X to examine the area to see if there are hidden doors or traps ahead...and even in the first dungeon shock tiles abound, so it's better to test the terrain often when you first encounter one of them.

However examining each and every tile would break up the game, so your party members randomly "feel" something so that you can concentrate your efforts on searching in specific areas.
It's rather disappointing that some special tiles (like the dungeon exit or the warp to an other level) are ignored by this command, especially when you meet them for the first time.

You can run into chests that can be rigged, as in perfect D&D tradition. That's where the thief shines as the class can check if there are traps and disarm them; disarming is not 100% sure but it's better to waste your warrior/paladin/valkyrie/monk HPs in testing if chests are safe.
A few doors are also locked so your thief can try to pick these locks.

Some monsters in the dungeon aren't hostile and you can chose to leave them be or attack anyway; you can also chose to bypass some encounters if you're lucky. One of the best things in Class of Heroes is that encounters are fought directly in the labyrynth unlike the classic cut-in Etrian Odyssey had.

As mentioned before, it might be possible that the enemy is shown as a black shadow until you recognize it. The shadow lets ou know the general type of enemy your're facing (example: a bat) but not the type (a dire bat, a tiger bat and so on) nor its level, just their numbers. Enemy HPs are never shown and with all enemies simply represented as a still sprite throughout the fighting you never know how the enemy fares...I don't mean I want to know the correct amount of HPs for each and every monster, but its general conditions like "perfect shape", "spilling blood all over the floor" and so on.

Speaking about traps, Celestials, Diabolos, Sprites and Erdgeists actually levitate above the floor and do not take damage from traps tied to the floor and can pass over pits, however these three classes have are geared toward specific classes or are not specialized enough to make excel in their profession.

Races also have a size attribute that limit the number of items the can carry and equip.

I have played a bit with races and classed and discovered that the cleric can appraise items for free, but it's not 100% sure he will succeed; on rare occasions, the cleric can become flustered and not able to appraise items and cast spells for some time...but it's nice to save money from having the school store appraise items for you.

I'm still trying to find a good way to make money, but with my party reaching level 3 I can finally stay in the labyrynth for quite some time without worrying too much, although a ranger without a bow is basically useless, as are most mages as they cannot do physical attacks from the back row and their spells are limited.

Haven't tried to alchemy laboratory, where you should be able to create items out of materials found in the dungeons and recipes bought in the academy store, maybe it's the best way to get items to sell at high price without grinding too much.

One last thing: you can have multiple parties active at the same time: for example, if your main party perishes in a dungeon, you can send a rescue team to search for your fallen allies and bring them back to the school grounds where they can be revived. You can also switch between parties that are already in a dungeon.
Haven't tried this myself because I fear it will be too chaotic to manage multiple parties when I'm still struggling with one, but it's surely a nice idea.

[abigsmurf]

Quite extensive impressions

I'm semi tempted as heavy customisation in RPGs is something I enjoy. Sounds like a game that enjoys making players suffer, is it hard? Is the difficulty fair or does it punish bad luck?

Guessing the story is minimalist too.

[briareos_kerensky]

Sounds like a game that enjoys making players suffer, is it hard? Is the difficulty fair or does it punish bad luck?

Compared to Etrian Odyssey, you won't see the game over screen so much; in fact, I haven't seen it once, while EO likes to see you killed by butterflies.
However I'm playing in "normal" mode; the game also features a "masochist" mode and you can switch between the two freely: maybe in masochist everything will be a lot more difficult...I was planning to move on to masochist soon, after getting some equipment for the characters in the back row.

I have a lot of thoughts on CoH's battle system that I will streamline later once I get out the first dungeon.

Guessing the story is minimalist too.

Story goes that "some time ago a labyrinth appeared across the world", you enroll into this academy for adventures and you're sent out to die as part of your studies. There are a few NPCs but I don't think story will go deeper than "kill 'em all".

[briareos_kerensky]

And I went into the game a bit further. I was finally able to get enough money to get my ranger a bow, rearrange my party a other random things.

First, party: unlike Etrian Odyssey I went for a male character and named him with my nickname. I think that the webcomic uploaded on the official US site had some influence on me but I thought it was a good way to get into the game faster.
Of course, the remaining five members are girls.
First formation was: human warrior (to become paladin), draken warrior, halfling thief, erdgeist ranger, celestian wizard and elf cleric.
It worked well, however the ranger was sitting in the back line doing nothing due to the lack of a bow (back liners cannot attack unless they have a ranged weapon or a long weapon like spears).

So I went back to the academy office and played a little bit more with classes and so on...after some test I gave the hard-earned bow to the thief, placed her in the back, booted the Erdgeist ranger and got me a samurai catgirl; they're called Felpiers here, but still catgirls they are.
Party works well, everyone's happy except that the two mages sit around doing nothing in battles as they have limited spells and MP rechargin items costs you an arm, a leg and your favourite internal organ.

I've also completed some more quests, including one where a teacher waits for you inside a hidden door of the labyrinth to tell you about trap tiles you already encountered and mastered to reach her.
Doesn't make any kind of sense, I know.

I'm still struck with the second quest I got, asking me to fetch an ancient or magic coin from the first labyrinth. There are monsters that are basically groups of money assaulting you and there are good chances they will drop coins after a battle...after 4 hours into the game I still have to get one of those coins.
It's not a problem of this quest only, it's a problem of all item fetching quests: I've been tasked to find a broken sling (labeled "junk" before appraising, just like all other broken weapons monsters might drop) but apparently the game likes to drop anything else than the items you're searching for.
I know, I'm talking about a dungeon crawler so i should be crawling all around, but this system is frustrating more than anything else: Etrian Odyseey had its share of fetching quests, but they could be solved by using a party specifically built to retrieve items from gathering points, while Class of Heroes relies only on random drops from random battles and there are no special abilities or ways to kill monsters that garauntees you to get a particular item: you know a specific kind of monster might drop a special item (like coins from the coin monsters), but they also might drop totally random items.
It's irritating to be struck in the first dungeon just to finish an extremely simple and mundane quest when you should be exploring more complex dungeons and actually advance through the game.

About battles: they're just too long. Sometimes you get groups of 12 enemies spread over 3 lines, meaning that only monsters in the font row can attack unless they switch positions: if this would mean that monsters would enact some kind of strategy, like retreating and healing, or supporting fellow monsters, everything would be fine: instead, they just attack, attack attack, dealing a staggering 1 damage point against characters with just the basic armor. Unfortunately your basic weapons do limited damage too, so battles are drawn out and completely uninteresting.
This is something I miss from Etrian Odyssey: monsters supported themselves and without a real strategy you could end battling some of them for minutes as they will continually heal, prompting you to spend precious MPs or items on them - it was the strongest point of the game, and how class abilities intertwined themselves further improved the battle mechanics.
In Class of Heroes, except race and alignment affinity, each party member fight for him/herself: the strategy is just press X until enemies are dead.
Class skills are given when a character reaches a certain level and after creating him/her there is no further customization except his/her inventory.
Battles are just plain boring, just like their aftermath: in Etrian Odyssey every step could lead to a deadly battle in a foreboding and menacing dungeon where a squirrel could steal your precious warp wire, in Class of Heroes it's more like a stroll around the park.

I still haven't seen the more advanced dungeons, but initial impressions aren't particularly good...there's no thrill in exploring dungeons or facing new enemies, something this kind of game lives on.

[briareos_kerensky]

Around 15 hours into the game and still have to find that damnable magic coin. Oh well...finally completed two other quests concerning item fetching and an "advanced" quest where I had to read through countless dialog lines about Particus Academy's 7 mysteries; I guess that Japanese wants to stick schools and their mysteries wherever they can...rather boring quest that had no other purpose in pushing the point that the doctor and your homeroom teacher are drunkards.

One of the major problems I have with Class of Heroes is that I can't really feel the world is set in: most probably it's due to the rather dull school setting featuring all those stereotyped characters and situations found in most animes and mangas combined with totally uninteresting class setup...warriors, paladins, wizard, rangers and clerics have been around since D&D first edition and the more "unusual" classes like Psykers and Evokers are just other names to describe jobs seen in other games - one of the things that captivated me in Etrian Odyssey was the class system featuring standard and non-standard classes: you have elemental mages (alchemist), meat shields (paladin) and archers (rangers) but you also get Hexers, Beasts and Warmagi and each and every class has been spun around enough to lose most the of the classic outlooks you have on them. As a huge plus, they fit extremely well together in a rather simple environment.
Class of Heroes expand this environment by adding a lot of secondary elements but never fully uses them, with some literally in the player's way. I already explained how I feel on this so let me skip onward to the menu system.

Dear developers, when planning menu-driven locations do not conceive them as completely isolated things.
I bring the alchemy process as an example: most encounters will reward you with to-be-identified items; you cleric can do it for free but she can fail (totally random: she can fail apprasing the 1000th iron chunk but get right a never seen before item). For a price you can get to the campus store and have them identified without fail.
The dormitory houses your lockers where you can leave items you don't want to stock up, like rare synthesis materials; from there you can move items to your item bag or your characters.
Let's say you have just bought a new alchemy item for an armor and go to the lab for a quick synthesis - the lab being the only place where you can see what the recipe needs: the object requires a broken armor and two crude iron pieces. Your previous labyrinth exploration gave you just one of those irons, so you can either stop at the dorms and pick it up from your lockers or buy it at the shop.
You return to the lab and syhtesize the armor; great. You then take a stroll through the available recipes and notice a piece of gear it might be useful, but you don't carry any of the items needed for the synthesis. So you go to the dorm to see if you have them or to the shop hoping they are carrying them; back to the lab for the synthesis or in the labyrinth hoping to find it.

Wouldn't have been better to show all readily available items from your characters and lockers instead of forcing the players going through countless menus just to retrieve one item? Surely alchemy is an important aspect of the game as you can freely add extra power to existing gear, but surely the developers want you to sweat for it!

An other good idea is the separated inventory between characters: as soon it's about useable items (like potions or one-shot weapons) it's all right, just like having a limited inventory, but why dividing money between them? Whenever you go to the shop or to the dorms you first have to give all the money to the character buying the item before anything...just why? It's a small thing but it's completely useless.
Still on money: recovering MPs is free but resting both both HPs and MPs is not. If you have a healer in your party you just have her rest, heal everyone up and then refresh her magic for free.

Some decisions don't make any sense, really and it all sums up with the previously exposed problems.
Sure I'm playing it more than anything else right now, but it could have been a lot better - I'm not playing because I want to complete everything in the game (what drove me forward in both Etrian Odysseys) but to be completely sure that the game isn't as good as it could have been.

[briareos_kerensky]

Still going around in dungeons...progress has been slow as I'm redirecting my efforts on somethings else (and *gasp* it's not a game).

The game features a world map with several different locations and three other academies and after completing the basic quests those locations open up for you to explore; to reach them you need to wander around the labyrinths almost without a clue where to go - it's a good thing: being a dungeon crawler it's rather pointless to know exactly where to go. Unfortunately the way it's done is a bit perplexing: gates warp you between dungeon sections, orbs warp back to Particus Academy and doors bring you back to the nearest world map location.
If a gate or a door will lead you to a world location still unavailable, they will take you to Particus or an other labyrinth section, which makes things confusing...for example, proceeding to Kusau requires to enter the gate at the end of the very first map I've ever explored, which I thought would lead to an other section of the first labyrinth.
The first time I visited the Kusau dungeon I was delighted to see a decent and a bit more detalied graphical representation of the environment, but when I checked the map I discovered that I was walking in a section I already explored, only with different textures and enemies.
Past this section Kusau featured different dungeons, but I was perplexed at first.

Kusau also features an inn, store and almost everything the academy offers (except faculty offices, library for quests and alchemic laboratory); everything is still menu driven but here you don't even have a generic NPC to greet you; item availability is the same as Particus but at an higher price and everything can be found in the dungeon...what's the point? Resting for MPs costs you money, but you heal your party with the cleric and have only her to rest.

Some mechanics absolutely need reworking, just like majors (classes) balancing.
For example, clerics: they master both black and white magics (black magic at a much slower pace though), can appraise items and at level 7 gains a group attacks against undeads.
Alchemists, which should be the top in juggling items, can appraise them starting from level 10 and they are the most time-consuming class to level up.

Each major has various skills, mastered by levelling up and this reduces team tactics (as if you need anything else than mashing X to confirm attacks on all characters): valkiryes can lower their defenses to increase offenses and paladins can take damage in place of other characters. Add a cleric/devout for healing and you've got some teamplay, but you have to wait for level 13 of both valkirye and paladin to pull this out; being the two advanced classes, they require a lot of experience to level up and if your characters didn't roll enough extra points when created, you first need to level them up a bit in a basic major and then switch to paladin/valkirye...from level one, of course.

Of course enemies are still deal ridicolous damage when you are able to kill them in a couple of attacks (if they are really strong) even with basic armor and weapons.
I've encountered a boss, or something similar: a lvl 5 Thief that opened the fight by causing fear to my whole party; fear doesn't allow casters to use magic - he was quite powerful, so - FUN! An actual battle where I should think what to do! No casters, so no healings on my front line which is my only attack option since the black mage is out of commission.
Too bad the thief died during the fourth turn: in the three previous turns he lowered all my front characters' health to half or even less, but in the end there was nothing different than just mashing X till he died.
Again, no tactics at all.

Class of Heroes has some interesting ideas but in the end all are executed poorly.