Just save yourself $[...] and have one of your buddies kick you in the nuts over and over and over. There's a lot of game here. It didn't need to be as hard as it is. I'm all for old school. I played (and very much enjoyed) the original Bards Tale games. So this definitely isn't coming from a 12 year old who has no concept of "hard" video games. This is hard just for the sake of being hard. I almost respect it in a sick way but I cannot recommend it unless you're a sadist.

The weak minded & people who don't like challenges turn back now. You will not like this game.

This game is very addicting once you figure out it. You can start off with their pre-made characters or enroll your own characters. I suggest using their characters to learn the basics of the game but don't worry, you can have a total of a 100 characters. So, don't forget to make your own. You get to pick Gender, Race, Alignment, and Major. Certain choices will affect what they learn, and what Majors they can be assigned to. You can change charactes Majors but you will need a certain alignment. You will lose certain spells, all skills, and go back to level one.

You can make teams of 6 students. 3 in Front Lines, & 3 in the Back Lines. Your choices will affect how well you do in battle. Such as you will not want 6 characters that are warriors, etc. Because if the 3 in the back don't have a ranged weapon or know a technique such as "breath" they will do nothing but defend. Also when picking a team you will want to look at how well the characters like each other. Such as having an Elf character & a Dwarf character. They do not like each other, and will lower their attacking. It doesn't mean you can't have them in a team. Just remember to balance them out with characters they each might like. Also the more the team fights together, the more they will begin to like each other. So keep that in mind when making teams.

The make up of the game is doing quests or taking classes. They are offered by teachers, and other students. I also suggest when picking quests & classes to look for ones in the same places. I was able to finish 3 in 1 visit.

Next I have notice people complaining about the amount of money given. It is true battles rarely give any type of money out but you do get tons of items. You will at least get an item for every battle. Now, before you can use any item to need to figure out what it is. You can pay for someone to do it at the campus store or you can use one of your students with the ability. This is way I suggest having a Cleric. A cleric has the ability to figure out what an item is. You have limited cash, and now you don't have to pay! You might also notice that the Cleric might become skitish after screwing up a couple of times. To solve this get a Devout, and have this character use "Calm". Both problems solved.

With your items you can combine them to make new ones. I suggest taking a great interest in this. It's very expensive to buy new but it's 3 times cheaper to make it yourself.

Another thing to keep in mind is Save Mode. You can pick between two modes. One is Normal. The enemies won't be as tough but don't drop very good items. But if you get a Game Over you don't have to start from the last time to saved. The other mode the enemies are tougher but drop better things. But if you get a Game Over you will have to load from the last place you saved from. Quick note to all players: SAVE ALL THE TIME. Certain characters if killed you may lose them forever because even if you treat them they may turn to ash, and die! I suggest saving everytime you are going to do something. It will be your best friend.

It's a hard game but it's really fun. I love it. You have to think about everything you do. It will have an impact on your outcome in life & death.

Let me reiterate the difficulty of this game.....its very hard, even for seasoned RPG'ers. You will have a blast creating your guild and I especially liked the "rolling up" your characters aspect, even if all you have to do is go back a screen until you get the points you want. Honestly I spent about an hour and a half deleting the pre-made characters and creating about 40 characters I would be able to pick from and use for the game....then I got into the actually game. The "walk 35 seconds, then fight random battles" got old quickly, and when you are spending extra time recovering your dead characters from the dungeons and THEN carrying them back to the main hub before continuing forward, its even more excruciating. Graphically, the static anime pictures and scenes are nice, but in motion everything looks second rate. I put about a good 6 hours into this one, before I had to hang it up. Hate to draw a comparison, but Etrian Oddysey blows this out the water.

First of all, I want to say that this is a hardcore old school RPG, if that concept doesn't interest you, you really will end up with no interest in this title at all. You can and will die permanantly in this game and this can be a rather hard game overall. I personally enjoy that kind of challenge and still didn't like the game for other reasons, but this title will offer you nothing if you don't like the old school dungeon crawler type RPGs.

However, unfortunately for me, even though I very much enjoy that type of game when it is done right this game did not work well for me at all. There are just so many little things in this game that just don't work all that well that I couldn't get past it. The big things that did this title in for me were:

1. Repetitive dungeons. For a game that claims that the dungeons are "random" map selection ends up with like a dozen different map layouts with different skins as you go from dungeon to dungeon. And I mean exactly every turn in one dungeon can be the same as the starter dungeon was when you first entered a dungeon.

2. Linear boring alchemy system. The alchemy system is simply annoying and pathetic, it is highly linear so all you need it for is to make the next tier of weapons for your characters as you get new types of items from the next floor of bad guys. If there isn't any skill or intrigue involved in the system, why not just have the mobs drop your weapons directly or buy them from the different shops. To have to collect 3 bat wings and one broken handle from the previous weapon to upgrade your weapon is just nothing more than a pita and not enjoyable at all because it is all strictly linear Axe 1 upgrades to Axe 2 at the time where you will need Axe 2 to successfully kill mobs that drop the items for Axe 2. There are no choices of maybe I should use my items to get a cooler fire axe for level 2 by waiting for one more part or use them now on a basic axe 2 it is all just too simple and linear.

3. Character classes are boring. Half of the classes are essentially useless and most of them are boring, also the limited spell casting just makes for a lot of trips in and out of the dungeon and lessening the usefullness of the casters a bit too much.

Overall, I am a fan of this genre and would have liked the concept of this game if it was better implemented. But as is I would recommend skipping this title for other better titles out there

Class of Heroes is an RPG in the style of old-school dungeon crawlers. The character creation, interface, and dungeons are all based on such. If you are familiar with that genre, then you'll absolutely love this game. For anyone else, though, this game may be hard to enjoy. Exploring, managing inventory, and using alchemy to create equipment, among other things, are all somewhat tedious and time consuming. There is a lot of menu navigation, and the random encounters are truly that...you may find monsters that are pushovers, or you may get utterly destroyed. There is nothing wrong with the game, but there's a chance you might find yourself getting bored with it rather quickly.