From a young age I’ve been more than happy to spend hours of my life grinding and turn-based battling my way through any RPG placed in front of me. Of all the types of RPG though, the ones I struggle to engage with most are the dungeon crawlers. I’m not sure what elements of this sub genre don’t always resonate, but something about the often brutal difficulty and excessive grinding don’t make my brain have a little party like other RPGs. There are exceptions to this though, like Labyrinth of Galeria and Etrian Odyssey, so I try to give dungeon crawling a go when I get the chance. Class of Heroes 3 Remaster unfortunately doesn’t quite belong on this exceptions list, though others may appreciate the old school design.
Class of Heroes was first released on the PSP in 2009, and had a few sequels which were predominantly not brought over to the west. One of these was Class of Heroes 3, so as well as being a remaster it’s also the first time many fans will get chance to play it. It also features loads of new classes, which makes sense given how utterly overwhelmed I was when I started it as a newcomer to the title.
Your first job in Class of Heroes 3 Remaster is to pick your school, which unfortunately for me apparently affects your difficulty. I obviously just picked the ones with the coolest uniform, and prepared to enrol as a newbie adventurer. The three schools may have different philosophies, but they all share the same goal of moulding the next generation of fantasy heroes. It’s your job to help with this by doing a lot of dungeon exploring, and also make the heroes themselves.
Like so many dungeon crawlers, this game sort of expects you to create a party from scratch to suit your specific fantasy taste and name them all after your cats and besties. There are a few premade characters, but like most intrepid adventurers I shunned them and started creating. The main issue with this is quite how many options you’ll have, and how little knowledge you’ll have about what they mean. With a wide range of fantasy races and even more classes to assign to everyone, figuring out how to make a balanced party is pretty much impossible when you begin Class of Heroes. Not to be dissuaded though I made some Fairies, Dwarves and Bahamuun (your guess is as good as mine) and headed out into a sandy maze of a dungeon.
It was there that Class of Heroes 3 Remaster revealed itself to be a dungeon crawler that does not mess around. I stumbled into a fight with fifteen balloon monsters, realised some members of my six-person party had 4hp at level one, and was wiped out entirely. The second time I wandered into the desert I only had to fight four balloons, and half of my party survived and gained a bit of experience. Doing this over and over I eventually had a vaguely respectable team, and got to level up my Warrior and Origami Mage.
During my time with Class of Heroes 3 I didn’t try every class available, because the amount is ludicrous. Some classes are locked behind certain races, others are locked at the start full stop, but regardless there are still loads to pick from initially. Working out the classes that work for you and you want to focus on is admittedly a bit of a mission, but you can’t deny the variety on offer.
The amount of classes might be overwhelming, but it’s not anything like as ridiculous as the relationship system. Your party of students can all have different connections assigned to each other, and I wish I could explain how this works. Positive relationships lead to new skills, but when you connect two characters and are given options to choose how they feel about each other you also have to make a negative connection between others. All of the above could be entirely untrue though, because the tutorials certainly didn’t help me discover this.
Alongside all the issues I had understanding different systems in Class of Heroes 3 Remaster, there were a few dated elements I didn’t appreciate. Dungeons (for example) are split into multiple areas you teleport between, and it just means you don’t ever get a sense for the layout. Coupled with old school grindy design and dated visuals, nothing about the game feels particularly remastered, outside of a lick of fresh paint.
I’d struggle to recommend Class of Heroes 3 Remaster over other dungeon crawlers, because it just feels so dated in 2025. If you’re into classic levels of grinding and brutal difficulty then you’ll likely have a much better time than I did playing it, but there are many more instantly entertaining options in this genre to play over this brutal remake.
