The nostalgia factor is strong in Class of Heroes. It, like other Atlus games The Dark Spire and Etrian Odyssey, is reminiscent of a time when first-person, dungeon crawlers ruled. For the most part, you imagine your own story, motivations and personalities for characters. While there are missions to accept and complete, there are no grand goals. It’s more about growth and exploration. Discovering every nook of the dungeons, engineering god-like warriors and forging all sorts of useful equipment.

The tragedy is that many people are going to shrug off or condemn Class of Heroes because they don’t understand it and aren’t willing to put the necessary time into playing it. If you’re expecting to jump into the game and conquer the first few classes within the span of one or two hours, you’re doomed to fail. Class of Heroes is a good game, but only for players willing to take their time playing it…

Gamertell recently received the opportunity to take part in early registration at Class of Heroes’ Particus Academy, and eagerly dove back into the school experience. Atlus’ forthcoming PSP dungeon crawler takes place in a school setting, where players go through classes and take assignments exploring a labyrinth as adventurer training.

As I began my new school career, I decided to chronicle my first impressions of life at Particus Academy.

Class of Heroes starts with players being inducted into Particus Academy. You meet your homeroom teacher, Ms. Yuno, and listen to Principal Feinman’s brief welcome announcement. After that, you are sent to the Faculty Office to register your students.

Upon arriving at the Faculty Office, I saw that a nice selection of 10 premade students, four with advanced majors, were available to choose from. As a bonus, each of them were level two characters and came with 100 gold in pocket money.

However, when a game touts having 500 character combinations and lets you have 100 characters waiting in the wings, you don’t want to go with premade. I wanted to make my own! So, I decided to begin with a neutral, human female named Jenni. To keep things from getting confusing, I’ll refer to her as CoH Jenni…