Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 Review – Sim Adventure School

Last year while looking over the games featured in the Steam Next Fest section of Steam, I came across a game I got interested in almost immediately; Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2. It had an interesting premise with even more interesting mechanics I was excited to see in a game. It has simulation aspects, JRPG turn-based mechanics and aesthetics, and cool character designs.

Game Name: Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2
Platform(s): PC (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Publisher(s): PQube
Developer(s): Agate International
Release Date: June 22nd, 2023
Price: $19.99

I have decided to use my mini-review format to review this game. Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 starts with you as a new school principal, and you only have one student that shows up to school. The goal is to build your hero school up and amass more students to help train them and also to help you gain enough resources to run the school.

The Good

Right from the get-go, Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 draws me in with the art. The stylized characters and art look amazing. The characters are chibi stylized in the Gameworld but have actual art and portraits when talking. The way the school and buildings look are all different and make it fairly easy to navigate to the building that you want to select. Enemies also have a fun difference in design when you go from the first area. Overall the aesthetics in the game are a nice choice and complement the world it represents.

You may not get a lot of character in the overarching story, but Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 introduces event stories on random days that add more personality and motivations for the students and teachers that become a part of your academy. The world itself is fascinating, although it can be a bit shallow at times. There is political intrigue and ways to increase your reputation in the eyes of each kingdom. Helping individual kingdoms with tasks or errands makes areas surrounding those kingdoms easier to traverse with your students who go on adventures and quests nearby.

One of my favorite aspects of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is the class system. All students come in base classes of knight, cleric, mage, or scout. You can add more diverse classifications by having them study on days. Studying takes stamina, so you need to pay attention to how much they have. If a student doesn’t have stamina, they can no longer be used for errands, quests, or adventures. So some periods can be useless without stamina. Once the student’s study is finished and they have enough points in their preferred stat, they can be upgraded or changed to a different class. There is a pretty good diverse selection of courses that help get your student tons of skills to sift through. You have control of which skills they have equipped as they do quests.

The Bad

Initially, I was super excited about the turn-based combat of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2. Sadly the combat isn’t very complex. Basically, you get turns based on the speed stat of the characters you bring along, and you can get three turns at a time. At first, figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses and adjusting who you fight with is very engaging. Later on, when your characters get leveled up quite a bit, most fights turn into select your paladin and kill all the enemies with one turn. I could make things more engaging for myself by not bringing stronger character and trying to go back to strategizing, but then I won’t get enough gold for the building upgrades I want to do. Ironically I got more enjoyment from the simulation segment than the combat segment. It probably isn’t too big of a problem for those new to JRPG-type games and want to experience one that is relatively easy. It’s just for someone like me who is a veteran of the genre, and this combat seemed rather lackluster once you get your characters classed in the more advanced classes.

There is no also manual save selection. You have to rely on Autosave for your game progress. Luckily it generally saves pretty frequently, but I prefer having the option to save when I want to try different ideas to see how things play out, and I was unable to do that. If you are someone who forgets to save (How could someone do that after living through the SNES period of manual-only saves?), this probably won’t bother you. You turn off the game and want to return to it later, and you may have to redo a day or two of studies which won’t take much time. Either way, it is a problem for me.

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 also has some wonky bugs. There isn’t a rhyme or a reason sometimes for these bugs. For example, I will be in combat with a giant boar, and as I defeat it, the UI leaves the screen, and I am just stuck in a battle scene that won’t end, so I have to end the game to restart my progress. If it wasn’t clear before… There are no manual saves! When a bug or glitch happens, I am reliant even further on that auto-save progress. Luckily, not all the bugs will crash the game. Sometimes it is just a weird graphical bug that is interesting to notice as a character clips through a building or another character.

The Verdict

Overall Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is a pretty fine game. It has a very nice and addicting simulation aspect, building up more adventurers who journey to your school. It has a great range of characters and classes. It even has a fun loop of gathering resources for missions, minigames, and collecting student tuition. However, the problems of the bugs, glitches, and overall combat being less and less engaging down the line make it hard to recommend unless you want to be a principal of an academy for adventurers. I will say it is sold for a fair price of $19.99 for what you get.

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5.

 

Review Disclosure Statement: Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 was provided to us by Keymailer for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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