loading . . . Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent Deep Look This isn't a bad battle system at all. With a little experience and patience, it's fun to work with. This comes with a major caveat, however...
First impressions matter. When I found a copy of Class of Heroes Quest (or by its localized English title, Adventure Academia: The Fractured Continent) new on the shelf at a major retailer in Japan for a whopping eighty-plus percent off its sticker price, I knew that this was not a good sign. Even so, I have been pleasantly surprised by extremely discounted games in the past, so I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, while this game has some decent ideas and even some capable execution, in other areas it hamstrings itself.
Adventure Academia takes the player outside the known realms of other games in its series and into the continent of Pedra and its quartet of kingdoms with an obvious naming theme: the Ruby Firelands, the Sapphire Waterlands, the Dia Earthlands, and the Emerada Woodlands. The hero of the hour is Alex, son of the headmaster of Obsidian High in the Ruby Firelands. While he's at the bottom of his class for actual combat ability, he's smart and attentive, and moreover, he has inherited a major artifact from his dad: the Ruler Orb. It is this mysterious item that literally makes the game, as what the player sees and plays on screen is described as Alex's own view of the orb's power in action.
The best way to describe the combat in this game is 'real-time tactical', as Alex and his classroom of allies move freely across the battle map and attack the enemy with minimal direction beyond setting a goal point to reach. The true power of the Ruler Orb lies in how it lets the player rearrange things on the fly. At any time, any active classmate can be selected, picked up with their limbs dangling in the cutest manner, and moved back to within a certain distance from Alex and the orb. Combined with the pause button, this allows the player to remove allies from danger, maximize access to healing, or otherwise manage the band of rowdy schoolchildren out on the world's most dangerous field trip to save the continent from its encroaching dungeonization.
The trade-off is that it takes a while to unlock the party's full potential in any given battle. Every party member, including Alex, starts a map at rank 0 out of 5, and ranking them up for stat boosts takes increasingly large amounts of mana from the orb's stock. The maximum number of units the player can have on the field depends on Alex's rank, starting with two classmates at the beginning and up to six at rank 5. Each unit also has a special skill that requires mana from the same slowly-accruing pool. Battles take a while to really get going, as rushing in too soon often results in a classmate losing one rank and getting knocked out for a short period of time before the player can pull them back in.
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This isn't a bad battle system at all. With a little experience and patience, it's fun to work with. This comes with a major caveat, however, and that is the game's balancing. Class of Heroes is primarily a dungeon RPG series of the sort known for its static grind mindset, which does not pair well with this entry's real-time amalgamation of genres. Around the time Alex and his friends take out the first major boss and move on to the Sapphire Waterlands, the difficulty makes some massive leaps with timed mechanics and zerg rushes. Due to how the in-battle ranking mechanic works, there are few immediate options in a situation where the party is outclassed, which is often. The only way to stand a chance is to return to previous missions multiple times to build up base levels, equipment, cash for upgrades, and the study points required to increase a classmate's grades and ability set. The actual cost in money, experience, and study points balloons steadily, making it into a grind comparable to an all-nighter before exams.
And this is about where I bow out. The stated par levels for any given stage have ceased to reflect the difficulty of the stage. The fact that enemy generators on maps have no maximum limit means that there are stages I struggle with even on replay with much stronger classmates, simply because there is no end to the summoned fishmen unless I can take things in hand immediately. The story is cute but generic, and certainly not enough to make me want to suffer through more battles.
I'm sorry, Adventure Academia, but you do not get a passing grade here. Soon I shall find out how much I can get for this game at the secondhand store.
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