Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2, developed by Agate, was first released in early access on PC in March last year, and has recently come to the Nintendo Switch. As the sequel to a series of flash games and the previous Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story game, the game slightly improves on previous graphics, however is repetitive, boring and not well suited to the switch's small screen.

When starting Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 you are thrown straight into a combat tutorial. This makes it seem like combat is a lot more prominent in the game than it is, however it is still a strong start to an otherwise slow game. We learn that we are the principle of the school we are heading towards, escorted by our only pupil, as we guide them through the tutorial battles.
 

The game starts to falter pretty quickly as the simple combat tutorial transforms quite quickly into an ambush of tutorials for school management. There were so many tutorial pop-ups that  I often felt like I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t remember whether I had been told something already and just forgotten or if the game was expecting me to figure it out for myself.

There are three main elements of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2’s gameplay: a management simulation aspect where you grow the school, a turn-based RPG element while undertaking quests, and visual novel-style cutscenes.

The RPG part of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is very simple. You walk around a grassy plain, kill monsters and after meeting a goal, return to the academy. In my opinion, a lot of work needs to be put into the quests to make them more fun. While the objective changes: collect apples, open boxes, kill a certain amount of a certain monster, aspects like the actual map and monster spawn locations remain the same. Fights are boring, the attack patterns are the same and while there are rewards for fighting, it doesn’t feel like there is much point in doing quests.
 

You are able to assemble a team of students to take on the quests, equipping them with skills they learn through their classes. Only one student can attack per turn which meant I often had one sacrificial student who was never used but acted as an additional health bar.

The most involved part of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 is the management of the school, of which you are the head teacher. When first jumping into the game, you are given a brief introduction to the rather cluttered interface on the screen. In classic school sim style, you can purchase new classrooms to expand the school, assign students to classes and examine student records. You are given a list of tasks to complete, some of which have rewards but the majority of which don’t. One of the main issues with the management sim element of the game is that the only things I really knew to do were the tasks listed. There is very little flexibility, even down to the majors you initially give the students, money is tight from the very beginning and a lot of things are locked behind the need to increase your prestige.

There is also a democracy element of the game which relies on forging relationships with other regions in order to decrease the difficulty of their dungeons. This is purely based on donating money to them which, given how limited resources were, wasn’t something I did often. I won’t lie, I played some safe dungeons and some dangerous ones and did not notice any difference between them. I think this is a lazy way to implement democracy in all honesty and would rather it not be in the game at all.
 

At the beginning of new months, cutscenes, which interject a bit of story into the game, play. These are not especially long or interesting however do help to set the scene a bit and work to introduce new teachers and concepts. These are presented in a visual novel style with characters speaking and the occasional dialogue choice to make. As far as I could tell while playing, these responses don’t have any bearing on the actual gameplay experience. These are the most graphically appealing parts of the game, with detailed 2D artwork of the teachers and other game characters. The story goes rapidly downhill from the tutorial. The cutscenes between months were so boring that I often found myself skim reading or even skipping them completely.

The game's graphics are otherwise quite lackluster. The school sim sections have the worst artstyle, despite having the most opportunity to do something unique and diverse. Buildings look dull and there could be much more interesting designs for the unique classrooms. The combat and quest artwork is nicer, with a more traditional RPG style. These sections of Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 remind me a lot of mobile RPG’s.

Occasionally, the school will host events such as a fishing tournament or swimming competition. If you choose to take part in them, and there is an option to skip if you want to, you will be given a student to help you win. The mini-games associated with the events are fiddly and the game does not tell you how they work, meaning you have to try and figure them out for yourself. The first one which came up for me was the fishing tournament and it took me four or five attempts to win first prize.
 

I also experienced several bugs and glitches while playing, some more severe than others. On my first attempt at playing Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2, I made it through the tutorial however couldn’t start any quests, meaning I had to completely restart my game to get it to work. On my second playthrough attempt, the settings menu didn’t work and would stay open, not letting me see any of the information behind it. This was especially frustrating when trying to use the help menu to look back at previous tutorial elements. Both playthroughs also had a glitched student with no name, who took up a student slot yet could not be used in quests and copied the traits of one of the other students. While I don’t know for sure, I can only assume this was a bug too.

While Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 attempts to cover a lot of ground, doing so means that on the small switch screen it feels extremely cluttered. Some boxes, such as the clipboard which lists your tasks, are so small that you can’t read the writing on it and sentences are cut off. Accessing the correct section of the screen takes some work and the controls to do so are not the most intuitive. I think using the PC version and having the option to just click with a mouse would be preferable.

If you enjoy this style of game and are looking for a management sim with RPG elements, then you may enjoy Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2, however, I can’t in good faith recommend it for the Nintendo Switch. The game is buggy at times, difficult to focus on due to the clutter and is clearly not meant for the small screen.

Personally, I don’t think the combat, story or mechanics are unique or enjoyable enough to justify picking up Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2. There is too much time spent waiting, I wasted several months just skipping ahead as all of my students were resting and there is no indication to remind you that a student has finished their classes and can have a new class assigned. Ultimately, there are better school management sims out there to sink time into than this one and I don’t think it is worth the Nintendo Switch pricepoint.

Megan Cooke (@mcooke_journo)
Editor, NoobFeed