Class of Heroes 2G: Remaster Edition

Like many of the dungeon crawler series ported from the handhelds, Class of Heroes 2G gets to benefit from reusing many of the assets the original game created, allowing it to focus more on the systems and content, and we get a far better game for it. I was deeply critical of the original, it being one of the few games I gave a non recommendation review to, so it's quite pleasing to be able to give this a thumbs up, even if it still won't blow veteran dungeon crawlers away. The series is obviously aimed toward younger players, and that's fine, because it serves as a decent gateway game into Wizardry style dungeon crawlers, whereby you get a taste of the complex systems such as the character creation, gearing, and crafting, with most of the difficulty/complexity stripped away. The game is still a button masher whereby you can cruise through 90% of the game just hitting attack. But that's fine, because not every dungeon crawler needs to be Elminage Gothic. For those that have played or are considering the first outing, there are a number of changes they've made that makes this version vastly more playable: 1 - You no longer have to identify every loot drop. There's still an unnecessarily large loot table and the crafting system is all but pointless, but not having to spend literal hours across the course of a playthrough clicking identify on every drop before you can sell it in the shop is a huge boon. 2 - They refrained from implementing the mass evasion they spread all over the latter game monsters and bosses that meant you could only hit them with one team attack. Now you get to just attack at your leisure, even if using that overpowered group attack is still the best option for downing most encounters. 3 - The maps have a little more inspiration in their design. They're still nothing you'll remember, but gone are the mirrored blocks, replaced with more interesting webs of square rooms and corridors, with some areas even backtracking on themselves with multiple entries and exits to weave between. 4 - The boss compilation has become more monstrous than a large roster of highschool girls acting as a magic seal. There's still regular battles with other students, but this feels more natural and engaging than it did previously. The worst thing I can criticise is there being a few translation bloopers, such as Heal and Healius (the single target and group heals) reversing in their higher ranked versions, Metaheal becoming the group heal and Metahealius becoming the single target one. It's also impossible to understand what half the icons in the stat pages mean, since you get no solid descriptions and can only use your own common sense on what those icons are referring to. But none of this is game-breaking stuff or hard to figure out, if it even matters at all. Is the game a masterpiece? No. Will it likely to be memorable beyond it being one of the first games you ever played as a kid? Not a chance. But it serves its purpose of mindless entertainment to lose a couple of days of your life in. The cast of characters are cute, there's a few dark story elements that get their fairytale turns out good in the end, and there's some 'member berries in there for those who played the original -- though you certainly don't have to (nor should you) in order to play this. At the end of the day, if you want to try out a wizardry style game, you can't go wrong with this, so long as you don't mind anime schoolkids being anime schoolkids, aren't going to be offended on either side of the political spectrum by the butch fairy teacher being as stereotypical of what that description in real life would be referencing, and can get over the 1000+ items and 50 odd spells you'll never have to do anything with. The game made me genuinely laugh in places and had minimal frustration, which is far more than some manage to accomplish.