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Finally, A Job Where I Can Get Somebody Else To Do It

  • Addit
  • 02/08/2014 01:46 PM
  • 1955 views


A Game Made By: Archeia_Nessiah & Fandrey
Created Using: Custom Engine (Flash)
It's A: ACTION SIMULATION RPG Game
That Roughly Takes Around: 2 - 4 Hours To Complete
And It's A... COMPLETED GAME!!!


As Reviewrim soon draws to a frantic conclusion I find myself two reviews short of earning the ultimate prize: a shitload of badges. And what better way to earn those final two shitload of badges by reviewing both installments in the Valthirian Arc series.

The original Valthirian Arc was a flash game released way back in 2010 by the combined artistic forces of Archeia_Nessiah, Fandrey, and including a host of other talented individuals that I don’t really know of. While the original Valthrian Arc wasn’t a total household name here on RMN like some of the other more prevalent games, the game seemed to have quite a moderate amount of success on other popular flash sites like Newgrounds, Kongregate and even JayIsGames! That’s pretty impressive stuff. I remember playing the original game a long time ago and quite enjoyed it despite its few flaws.

So, after all this time has passed, has this game started to show some rust finally – or is it actually better than I remembered? That’s what we’re here to find out first before we jump into the long awaited sequel! Better strap on the ugliest tie that you have – and put on those giant clodhoppers, as we become principal for a day…er, years.

The Story


They must be desperate.


In the mythical world of Valthiria there is a new school opening up dedicated to the training and the teachings of various young warriors who are looking to use their newly found fermented skills in the field of battle to assist civilians in their pleas and protect all those from the savagery of increasing monster attacks who prey on the innocent. That school, along with many others from across the land, has been the main resource of turning up some of the world’s finest soldiers and mages. Without them, Valthiria would be overrun by wild beasts and numerous other problems plaguing the planet from disaster. (Thank god for the education system!)

You, the player, have just been appointed by the king and his advisor to become the new principal of one of these fine academic establishments. Despite no educational background of any kind, or even any fighting expertise credited, the king has put his trust in you – yes, “you” – to go out there and continue to uphold the legacy of high standards set by those that have lead in the past before you. And although you have just signed a three year contract and received a runaway chicken as a small signing bonus for being hired, the king warns you that he will not tolerate failure as an option and that any sign of lack of progress will result in your termination – and quite possibly your head. (So, yeah, don’t screw up.)

Can you survive the whole three year term and earn that prestigious princey award for the outstanding achievement in the field of excellence, or are you just another deadbeat principal? Only time will tell.


The Gameplay


Go my children! Attack! Attack for daddy!


Valthirian Arc may appear at first to be quite overwhelming in stature (especially if you’re not a tactics fan), but I can assure that after a few minutes of playing this you’ll get the hang of it quite easily thanks to its simplistic interface and easy hands on tutorials.

The objective of the game is to raise your students (and persuade new ones to join with money) as high as they possibly can go so they can graduate and leave your academy with a diploma so they can become a high ranking member of society! In other do this, you must send your troops out to battle, run errands for the town and do some odd small jobs along the way. As they earn more experience, you can raise their rank which increases their overall statistics, the amount of fame points that you’ll receive when that student happens to graduate, and you’ll even have the chance to change their class at around Grade 10. This is basically the main goal of the game, raising your students and sending them off to graduation when the time comes and making sure that you keep your job in the process. What I really like about this game is although simple in scope, there are many different strategies in handling how you do things here, which is surprisingly pretty deep for a game like this. For example, you could just raise four students to the maximum level and pretty much slaughter everything in your way, but you do need to set those kiddies free sometime soon if you’re going to end up keeping your job and eventually making it to your full three year term unshaved. You could always keep one superachiever around while apprenticing three other students, but eventually that one kid isn’t going to be able to do everything by themselves and you may lose out on some precious gold and fame points along the way. Despite its simplicity, this game is incredibly well thought out and you’ll have fun raising your multiple army of brats while promoting them to new classes and giving them shiny new weapons to play with along the way.

Battles are just simple “click on this and watch them die,” which may seem like not a very well elaborated plan but, hey – it gets the job done. You could also press the shift key to gather all your units altogether, and pressing enter when your Principal Intervention gauge is full will bestow a small bonus upon your students, like giving them a speed boost or even gradually restore their HP’s over time. It’s not really much, but if you wanna be a pro at this game you’re going to need every single advantage that you can get.

While the game’s initial impression will have you grinning the whole time and just having a ball for the first hour, you’ll start to notice a bit of a repetitive pattern starting the form… And I don’t like these patterns. You see, after a while, you’ll notice that things are starting to play out pretty much the same; the same enemies, the same types of missions, the same objective, the same everything. And that’s really Valthirian Arc’s biggest flaw is the lack of variance between itself after a while. You can only get so much with doing the same things over and over again that most players will probably quit or just get themselves fired after a while.

But this game is a challenging one, but a beatable one at that. Although after the second year this game gets almost virtually IMPOSSIBLE to stay afloat, you do get ten chances if you don’t make the evaluation period, so the game is a bit forgiving in that sense. There are also a lot of different personal achievements to collect and do as well, and even compete against other players from across the world for the highest score! For a flash game, this game sure offers quite a lot for such a tiny package.


The Soundtrack


Can’t somebody else do it?


The tunes used for this game are incredibly good and bouncy and feature original pieces to boot! The battle theme is quite catchy, and you may even remember parts of it even after you’re finished with this one, due to how many times you’ll actually hear it in this game that it will be engrained into your memory forever. The main menu theme is also wonderfully done and one of my personal favorite tracks for this game. In a nutshell, while not completely flawless, the soundtrack does its job quite well and it doesn’t totally make you reaching for the cotton balls from the back.

The sound effects, especially the battle voices, are actually pretty well done, almost like if a real professional team was doing it. Although I found it a bit strange that I would hear the female voiceovers if I didn’t take any female recruits with me (same as if all my females students died in a battle), it didn’t contradict much from the overall experience. And if the voice overs happen to bother you a lot – there’s an option to turn them off at almost any time. Thank god for that.


The Aesthetics


10 gold pieces to change his name!? GOUGERS!!!


From the beautiful castle backdrop at the beginning of the game to the incredibly adorable chibi styled sprites and fantastic portraits of the characters, I have no real complaints about this part; it’s just simply breathtaking to see. Everything looks great, even after almost four years of this game being released. Even the H.U.D’s and menus look sharp and polished by today’s standards. It’s amazing to see just how far everybody that was involved with this game on an artistic level have come and gone from this.

The End Result


Fine! You don’t want me? Then I’ll just take my massive severance package and go.


While the game’s repetitive nature prevents it from being an established classic, for what it is, this is still a very well done, and often times a very entertaining experience with nearly endless different strategies and a ton of personal achievements to shoot for. This is the type of game I wish I had back then when I was in highschool when we just played a bunch of flash games when the teacher wasn’t looking. It’s amazing to see just how far everybody has come from an artistic standpoint and a technical standpoint from this.

If you’re someone that enjoys playing tactical RPG’s, then this one is for you! Yeah, RPG Maker isn’t the only that can make a viable tactical based RPG like this. And there’s no excuse not to least try it out, even if it’s just for an hour or so. Hopefully the sequel can improve on itself and add even more content to an already pretty stacked game.


OVERALL GRADE:
4 / 5 - B ~ Pretty Darn Good!!!

Posts

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Thanks for the review! I lol'd at this one especially when you talk about the principal part. We're glad you enjoyed it. :D

One of the main problems of this game was the time constraint (VA2 I think too like, 2~3 years in-comparison to VA1), so many things we wanted to do ;w;

Thanks again~
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