Of all of the variations of RPGs that I tend to find the hardest to engage with, despite them representing one of the genre’s oldest forms, the dungeon crawler is near the top of my personal list. I have some fond memories of playing them from the early days, for sure, but for the most part now they always tend to feel a little dull to me. That isn’t to say I haven’t seen better attempts out there, but it can be a struggle to make them interesting given their somewhat baked-in repetition.

Right out of the gate I’ll absolutely say that in that light I’ll give Class of Heroes 3 Remaster credit for putting measurable efforts into fighting that perception, at least to some degree. While most games in this subgenre tend to be happy to stick with more well-known classes as you decide what characters to include in your party, the developers here really swung for the fences, featuring the traditional, the unorthodox, and some I simply have never even heard of. Considering that all of this is spread among 3 different schools you can choose, it makes for an abundant degree of choices, almost cripplingly so. With that in mind, purely from an experimentation standpoint, there’s no question that with this many choices you’re free to go completely wild trying out different combinations and search for synergies, given that variety and the significant size of your party.

Once the rubber meets the road though, I did tend to find that choosing the route of experimentation more often than not resulted in frustrations. I would say that given the degree of choice and the general lack of specific direction, this would be a terrible choice for genre newcomers, who could likely drown as they try to take it all in and make any informed decisions. The thing is, even when the game sometimes tries to be helpful, some of the translations, naming, and shorthand for key elements are odd and can lead to needless confusion in spots. If you’re a genre veteran this may be a top-notch choice, but for everyone else I’d say there are likely better places to begin that may lack the same degree of variety, but are also more approachable on a general level.