School is now in session and Valthiria Academy is accepting fresh blood! A game that lets you manage your own school, pick everyone’s profession, put students to work as well as construct buildings to expand your empire! From the get-go, it looks and feels more like a browser game. The simple mechanics that just about anyone can learn within minutes makes you feel at ease with your first four students as you tackle quests and learn the advantages of each facility.
Launched on September 28 for the PlayStation 4 in Europe and with a worldwide release for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC on October 2, a game developed by Agate Studio and published by PQube. It’s a game that puts you in the shoes of a newly appointed principal and does the daily activities as one should as well as being tied to be the equalizer for the power struggle between the five queens of each kingdom that hopes to succeed the Mother’s Seat when the only heir is missing.
Along with your trusty companions, Jeanne, Eve and Kayla, you get to find and hire new mentors that would let your students fulfill an advanced role from a steadfast knight, an agile scout or a devastating magi. With each of them also having available two additional class promotions, this lets you have more varying build setups to keep things fresh even after a few graduations have passed. Construct dormitories for your students to live in, renovate and upgrade classrooms for better experience earned during missions or place statues among a few other buildings that lets you earn more blessings or earn more gold in a weekly basis.
Squad up and tackle missions. Embark on adventures to the seven seas, mountainous ranges or dark and creepy caves. You can control a team of four easily with the simple controls it offers but you can also let your other teams go on errands unsupervised. Have more students left in school? Don’t worry as they will still earn experience and stat points simply by attending classes or training in your facilities. Spending hard earned cash or crafting weapons from recipes and gathered materials in the world is the best way to get yourself an edge. With the game constantly graduating students every semester and the low level cap which gradually increase based on your academy rank, it helps a lot that weapons and accessories doesn’t have level requirements. This lets you use over-the-top legendary weapons as long as it’s for the right class in order to power-level through harder missions than a slow and steady grind ‘til the next graduation.
The gameplay itself is simple yet quite addictive. Mash a button and win. Control one class or control them all. Have as much as eight passive and trigger skills in a character and build the ultimate setup to destroy the opposition. Most times it can get very easy-peasy especially if you took enough time to gather strong weapons by constantly buying from the traveling merchant or crafting them from recipes. Yet at the end parts it can somewhat prove to be a challenge which is always welcome in my eyes since its rewarding you with even more unique legendary weapons. While there is some sort of strategy application involved, I find the pacing a little bit too fast to actually initiate them in time. With four classes each with at most two active skills at their peak, sometimes spamming the buttons to activate all of them is best.
It’s not a particularly long game but it does have its length especially when you try to complete every mission before dealing with the last. However the gameplay starts to rot and becomes repetitive as you run around the maps that never seem to keep you happy as they all look similar with barely enough eye-catching structures to keep your attention away from the similar shades of terrain. But the idea of legendary treasures was what made me pushed through to the end and their unique effects. Most of the characters in chibi form looks good enough but not as polished as I would’ve wanted them to.
There is no voice-acting which isn’t surprising and while the ambient music and sound effects are forgettable, overall I am satisfied on the full experience I’ve had over a week of playing. I’m repeating myself but this is an addictive game for sure. So while I say that, some may not agree and I completely understood their opinions. Repetitive gameplay, no voice acting, and a browser-like game quality isn’t the most attractive thing in the world especially with Red Dead Redemption 2 coming out after this. But if repetitive gameplay, simple core mechanics, building tools is at the very least an attractive thing for you, then I suggest to waste no time and grab this!
You must be logged in to post a comment.