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It's a board game! It's a
card game! It's a role-playing game! It's
Culdcept, a unique Saturn release that borrows ideas from a
variety of popular genres and merges them together to create
an experience that's comfortably familiar, yet refreshingly
original.
So just what IS Culdcept? Well, imagine
the board game Monopoly, and a fantasy card battle game like
Magic: The Gathering. Now imagine playing both of them
at the same time. That should give you a pretty good
idea of what to expect. Like in Monopoly, your goal is
to acquire as much of the playfield as possible, but instead
of marking your territory with houses and hotels, you use
mighty beasts and warriors instead.
 You'll draw
these characters from a hand-crafted deck of fifty cards at
the beginning of each turn. When you play one of these
creatures on a square, that territory becomes yours... but
smart decisions are necessary to ensure that the square
remains your property. If the opponent lands on one of
your squares, he can wrest control of it from you by
challenging your monster to a fight.
The only way to survive these
battles is to play your cards wisely, taking advantage of each
characters' unique abilities and territorial
preferences. That beefy minotaur might seem like the
best beast for the job, but if you're on a forest square,
you'd probably be better off planting a dryad or a dwarf there
instead. Creatures placed in their natural habitat have
a home court advantage which could determine the outcome of
close battles.
There's a lot to keep in mind
when playing Culdcept. You'll need to carefully consider
which cards to play, and when, and how you'll use your limited
supply of money. Should you play your most powerful
monster now, or use it later as a secret weapon in a desperate
situation? Is it worth the money to level up your
favorite character, making it most costly for your opponent to
land on its square, or should you tighten those pursestrings
just in case you land on one of HIS most heavily invested
properties? These are among the many decisions you'll
have to make, and the wrong choices could cost you valuable
territory and even the game.
That's the gameplay in a
nutshell. How are the graphics and sound? Well, a
board game like Culdcept doesn't really need fantastic
audiovisuals to make it work... contrary to what the hosts of
X-Play might tell you. However, Culdcept's artwork is
actually pretty impressive by Saturn standards. The
isometric levels offer plenty of depth, detail, and vibrant
color, and there's even interaction between the cards during
battles... they'll shoot fire, swing swords, and even fling
boulders at one another, leaving the combatants scarred with
scratch marks and burn holes. It's a good thing this is
just a video game, because all this property damage could get
mighty expensive after a couple of matches! The sound is
less memorable, but the background music is appropriate for
the medievel setting, even if the phony monster screams are
not.
The game's only flaw is that the
computer rarely fights fair, and is never a graceful
winner. Your opponents will often stack the deck against
you with superior cards and incredibly suspicious dice
rolls. On numerous occasions, I've successfully
predicted foul rolls that left me in a compromising situation
and the computer with a whole lot of my money. An even
more obvious example of the computer's shameless cheating was
when I used Flight, a spell card which doubles the number of
dice you'll roll in your turn. I played this card in the
hopes of jumping over my opponent's most valuable spaces, but
naturally, the computer gave me a pair of deuces and I wound
up on one of them anyway. On a subsequent turn, my
opponent used his own Flight card and got the highest possible
value for BOTH dice, leading him straight to the castle in the
center of the screen which pays out a hefty cash bonus.
This wouldn't be quite so aggravating if your rivals didn't
make it a point to rub your nose in their victories.
You'll be foaming at the mouth after Zeneth, your first
adversary, gloats for what seems to be the millionth time
about his latest stroke of "luck".
There's no question that Culdcept
is a great game, but it's best to enjoy this fantastic fusion
of Magic and Monopoly with a friend. The computer
opponents just have too many cards up their sleeves to make
Culdcept an enjoyable solo experience. |
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Culdcept
Omiya
Soft
Turn-Based Strategy
  
There was never a strategy guide
written specifically for this game, but the FAQ for Culdcept
Expansion, its Playstation counterpart, will work just as
well. I strongly recommend that you download it from
GameFAQs.
There's a lot of text in the game,
and the vast majority of it is in Japanese. However,
English speakers can play Culdcept if they're willing to spend
a few hours learning the ropes. Alternately, they could
buy the sequel, which was released for the Playstation 2 in
English.
It's a board game! Loading
time is rarely, if ever an issue.
Culdcept was enormously successful
in Japan, inspiring a number of sequels, expansion packs, and
even a few knock-offs from other companies. One such
derivitive was Capcom's Gaia Master, released for the Sega
Dreamcast in Japan.
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