Valthirian Arc : Hero School Story

 A Promising RPG series made by Indonesian Developer

 Another backlog RPG Game on my Switch that i cleared recently, at first i tried to finish this game just to make room for another game but came to take a liking as i spend more time on it. Valthirian Arc was made by Agate Studio, an Indonesian Game Developer which is quite something for the industry since this game is a full fledged RPG game.

 Valthirian Arc - Hero School Story is a hybrid Simulation - Action RPG game where you roleplay as a Principal of an Academy in Fantasy setting supported directly by Royalty and tasked with raising Students and train them to be Promising Adventurers that will serve the Kingdom someday. In terms of concept Valthirian Arc is probably find its place something in between Valkyria Chronicle 2 and Little King Story.

 Overall Valthirian Arc had some good potentials with its promising concept of Hybrid Sim RPG of Fantasy School Settings, but falls flat in execution because the Devs probably have not accumulated enough experience to fully implement their concepts.

 In Valthirian Arc, the gameplay is divided into Two Parts: School Simulation and Questing with the main goal is to reach the highest level of Accreditation. The Phase in the game are also divided into Semesters which the Graduation is the main source to gain Money and Accreditation and each semesters will have different requirements for Graduates which will net bonus resources if attained.

For the Simulation Part you try to allocate your available resources into making Buildings, Equipments to prepare the best outcome when you dispatch the students to Quests which are the main source of EXP. Once the Student reach Level 10 they are ready to be Graduated or Promoted into Advanced Job Class and the Graduate Payout incrementally increase as well

 For Questing in Valthirian Arc, the Students are the only source of the party members. The Action part is rather simple hack and slash game with light RPG element sprinkled on, which the outcome of the quest depends on the Students Level and their Equipment. Every students starts entering the Academy as Apprentice Class starting from level 1 , once they reach Level 10 they are able to promote into Fighter/Mage/Rogue Job Class Archetype and another Two choices of further specialized Job Classes on the next Promotion. Each Students also will learn new abilites according to their job once they reach certain level and this is when the Accreditation Level play crucial part.

At the beginning of the game, the recruitable students came only with Level 10 Cap but you will get access to higher level cap Students up to level 30 as your Accreditation level rises. The Strongest abilities of the final job classes are only available by level 25 so It is not advisable to invest too much on low level cap students.

 The Level Cap system in Valthirian Arc exposes one of the main flaw of the game design. The main source of EXPs are quests which are limited in numbers and while the amount of quests are sufficient enough to raise endgame party as the Valthirian Arc, you will still have hard time if you Squander them. But by the time you got access to Level 30 Cap Students, you will have barely any quests to properly raise them since there are only two recyclable Quests for levelling and they are meant for Low levels. While Valthirian Arc is quite forgiving in terms of difficulty, it is just frustrating to have limitations imposed from oversight like this one.

 Valthirian Arc doesn't really excel when it comes at storyline as the plot are as standard as it gets in order to keep things going forward. The main plot of Valthirian Arc basically revolves around the Academy tasked to find the missing Princess of a Kingdom after the Queen passed away and make sure her coronation run smoothly. The sidequest for the Ultimate Weapons are something that resemble to a story apart from the Main Storyline in which the Finale are not wrapped up properly either. While Valthirian Arc got some interesting supporting characters which are mostly Mentors for Advanced Job Class, their plotline are not expanded any further once their quest are finished.

While the end product of Valthirian Arc is far from perfect, I would cut some slack with Agate since it is difficult undertaking to make a RPG Game comparable to mainstream JRPG for a company of their size. However Companies like Falcom or Sega will definitely get flamed if they released half baked product.

 I think Agate definitely should keep working on iteration for Valthirian Arc series as they did quite well on some parts for this game and just need to keep improvising on the lacking parts. I would be gladly to support them on Kickstarter should they had a solid plan for the next Valthirian Arc game.