Class of Heroes PSP: Preview and Details

Kris Erickson • Jan 21, 2009 • Comments (0)

Japanese RPG lovers rejoice! Boutique publisher Atlus USA is bringing over a new IP from Japan called Class of Heroes. It promises to be one of the most technically deep and challenging RPGs yet released for the PSP system. The news about Class of Heroes broke earlier this week when a GameFly product listing spilled the beans to Internet detectives. Atlus has since fessed up about the project and officially confirmed it, also saying that we can expect the game to arrive in North America by April 2009.

The game has a definite Etrian Odyssey vibe to it. What that means is that design decisions are decidedly old-school: dungeons play out in a first-person 3D maze, emphasis is on character customization and stat building more than story, and the difficulty curve will probably land in the hellish-to-insane range. The publisher has said that the 75 dungeons included in the game will likely take players around 80 hours to complete, making for a pretty satisfying package.

Atlus promises that the game will contain more than 400 items that can be crafted and customized using an alchemy system. There will be ten races featured in the game, which in addition to the standard ones will include novelties like the Halfing, Sprite, Fepier, and Drake. Characters can also be given one of three alignments, which we imagine will be something like good, evil, or neutral, adding to the game’s complexity.

Despite its hardcore RPG focus, Class of Heroes still manages not to take itself too seriously. The game has a very lighthearted setting reminiscent of the Harry Potter books, taking place as it does in a school for wanna-be heroes. In fact, as players progress through the game, they will be able to enroll in more and more challenging academies where they will meet new faculty members and gain new abilities in the labyrinths.

The Mashlenia Institute is the oldest and most prestigious Academy in the land. Only the gifted or incredibly wealthy need apply. Run by Principal Veema, the Institute has become even more exclusive after an incident where a young adventurer was lost in the labyrinths.