A first look at Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2
Publisher PQube and developer Agate have announced that Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is headed to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series whatnot and Nintendo Switch in early 2023, with physical editions available for both Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5. The game is also presently available via Steam’s Early Access programme, so you can get a good taster of what to expect right now if you’re so inclined.
As it happens, we were so inclined, so we spent a bit of time with the opening of the game just to get an idea of what’s going on.
In Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2, you take on the role of the new principal for a hero-training academy. After the land of Valthiria was left divided into four distinct factions following a conflict against a draconic threat, the need for heroic types has never been more apparent. Monsters infest the landscape, making travelling unsafe — so it’s up to you to nurture a new generation of folks who can help make the people sleep a little easier at night.
Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is divided into two main components: managing the academy, and sending your students off on quests.
The former provides you with a variety of important and interesting choices to make as principal. How do you allocate your resources? Do you build new facilities for your students to make use of, or do you spend time researching and upgrading your existing buildings? What courses do you run for your students? Do you want a cohort of prospective heroes with a broad range of generalist skills, or an army of specialists?
Managing the academy is accomplished through a simple point-and-click interface that will be familiar to anyone who has played a management sim that has released since the late 1990s. Various subscreens allow you to manage your students’ schedule, check on their status and switch their classes, research upgrades to the academy and your students’ performance, manage your diplomatic relations with the four factions of Valthiria and keep everyone under your watchful eye busy and productive.
There’s a fair amount of information to take in — and the game’s tutorial kind of bombards you with a lot of it up front — but before long the whole thing proves itself to be very intuitive, with most of the management elements being intertwined in some ways. Constructing buildings, for example, generally improves the performance of your students in some ways, while improving diplomatic relationships can make the rewards you obtain from quests more lucrative.
Which brings us on to the questing side of things. At the end of every in-game month — triggered by you, rather than a timer — you have the opportunity to send up to three students from your academy on a quest into an area you’ve unlocked. Sometimes these quests will have specific objectives such as culling a specific type of monster, at others you will simply have the opportunity to explore the area freely.
Quests unfold from an overhead three-quarter perspective with a freely rotatable camera, and initially look as if they might take the form of an action RPG. However, battles are strictly turn-based; whacking an enemy in the field simply gives you an advantage up front.
Battles place a strong emphasis on making use of the four main damage types — physical, magic, divine and “arcworks” — to knock down enemy defences and stun them. Once an enemy is stunned, you effectively get some “free” attacks that deal additional damage, so it’s in your interests to cultivate a variety of heroes with a range of skills that will deal with the monsters you’re likely to encounter in an area.
All characters can perform a basic attack of their respective type for free, and each can be equipped with up to two skills that they have learned through their studies. These cost varying amounts from a communal AP bar; at the outset of the game, you’ll only be able to perform one or two of these special abilities before having to return to relying on basic attacks, but campsites in the field provide you with the opportunity to rest and replenish your resources, and upgrading your academy and students over time will give you greater flexibility.
There’s a fun “collectathon” element to the quests, with the game’s interface tracking the number of treasures, monsters and teleportation feathers in each area, making it clear when you’ve picked the region clean of everything it might have to offer. There’s also a mild stealth element; sometimes it’s possible to sneak around strong monsters and pilfer treasures from right under their noses, which is always satisfying.
It’s worth pursuing those treasures, too, because not only do they provide you with gold and arcstone resources that are used in the running of your academy, you can also sometimes unlock new research blueprints and upgrades to your academy’s overall efficiency. In the very first area, for example, you can unlock an upgrade that allows you to research more things simultaneously, and another which improves the speed of your research.
While the majority of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2’s gameplay revolves around managing your academy and going on quests in quite a “freeform” way, there are also story elements to engage with, too. As you proceed through the months, you’ll get to know your various students a little better and find that they each have their own backstories to discover — and you can often choose the way in which you respond to them.
There are also events which occur during academy life, typically offering a series of possible responses to choose from. Some of these allow you to take more morally questionable routes — such as keeping a lost coin purse for yourself to benefit the academy — but you also generally have the opportunity to “do the right thing”, which is likely best in the long term if you want to keep your students’ respect.
Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is looking promising so far. The Early Access version on Steam has a few rough edges right now — most notably some dodgy controller support, so stick with mouse and keyboard for now — but it’s already very playable and demonstrating its clear potential. By the time it comes to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 early next year, we’re likely to have a very solid and entertaining game on our hands — and one that could potentially keep you busy for a very long time indeed!
You can preorder the physical versions of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 right now from our pals at Funstock — Switch version here and PS5 version here.
Join The Discussion
Rice Digital Discord
Rice Digital Twitter
Rice Digital Facebook
Or write us a letter for the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page by clicking here!
Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!
- Letter from the Editor: passing the torch - June 30, 2023
- Super Woden GP 2 is looking promising - June 30, 2023
- Inti Creates is making a 32 bit-style Love Live action platformer - June 26, 2023
