Let me start off this review by saying that Culdcept Saga is one of those of those rare games that will likely generate extreme love or extreme hate depending on who you talk to, with very little middle ground between. This is due to the fact that the title takes the status of “niche title” and revels in it.

Developed by Omiya Soft and published by Namco Bandai it’s probably a small miracle Culdcept Saga actually made it out of Japan. While it’s true the original Culdcept made an appearance on the PS2, it was a short lived run with relatively low sales. The title did, however, manage to obtain a small cult following, which is very likely the reason why Namco decided to give the game another chance on the 360 this gen.

I use the term “this gen” lightly. While the title still retains many of the same characteristics that proponents of the title will love, I personally felt that a lot more could have been done to update Culdcept Saga from the original PS2 title.

Gameplay:

In Culdcept Saga you play a “Cepter”, one of the rare few in the world of Asgard that can harness the power of the cards, broken pieces of the Book of Creation (also known as Culdcept). The storyline in the single player campaign follows the trials and tribulations of your avatar as you discover your Cepter abilities and use those powers for good.

While the story is pretty much your standard cheese fantasy fare, it does an adequate job of providing a backdrop for the game to take place. Action occurs on a game board with purchasable squares. You and an enemy Cepter essentially engage in a fantastical game of Monopoly, with empty spaces purchased by paying a cost in magic to summon one of the creatures currently in your hand. Your hand consists of cards drawn from a deck of 50 cards you will have put together before the match. Each turn you roll the dice and travel around the board, attempting to gain new territory while hoping that your opponent will land on a space you own. Upon landing on an opponent’s space you have the option of summoning a creature from your hand to wrest control of the space from the enemy, or paying a magic “toll”. Different creatures have different attack and defence stats, and these stats can be further modified with cards from your hand. If you are unable (or do not wish) to beat the enemy creature then you pay a toll to your opponent in the form of magic energy. Spaces can be upgraded (like buying hotels in Monopoly) for a sum of magic energy, which can drastically increase the toll charged on the space. You earn magic energy by passing checkpoints on the board, and or doing an entire “lap” around the board passing the starting castle. Once one Cepter achieves a target Magic energy total, and reaches the home castle that lap, he or she wins the match. The winner of the match receives a reward in new cards, thankfully the loser also gets a smaller reward of new cards. All in all there are almost 500 cards, which is about 200 more than the original Culdcept.

Essentially Culdcept Saga takes the best elements from Magic the Gathering and Monopoly to create an entirely new gameplay experience. This gameplay experience will be either loved or hated, very likely dependant on how much you enjoy CCG’s and board games.

Speaking for myself I am enjoying Culdcept Saga enormously. The game has some flaws, as the campaign matches do take a long time, but this is alleviated by a save feature which allows you to stop a match and come back later.

Graphics:

It hurt me to have to downgrade Culdcept Saga based on graphics, as the joy of the title is in the gameplay itself. With that said, the graphics are pretty sad considering this is supposedly a “next generation” title. The graphics, while looking sharp in HD, are barely a step above the original PS2 version. The animations when creatures are battling, are dull and boring. Surely more attention could have been paid to adding at least something better than the lame sword/arrow/insert placeholder of choice effect when battles take place? Eye of Judgement for the PS3 did really well in this area, with impressive explosions and really cool battle animations. There is no reason Culdcept Saga could not have done the same thing.

The cards artwork themselves do look very good, and the board the game is played on is comfortable on the eyes. The graphics also do a good job of presenting card data and keeping the player focused on strategy rather than digging through sub menus. With that said, I still think the title lacks the graphical “oomph” that one expects on a next gen system, and even at it’s budget price this really isn’t acceptable. There are XBLA titles that look better.

Sound:

The sound effects in this game are pretty ‘blah’, with a good dash of ‘meh’ tossed in. While I enjoyed the background music I have a feeling that most people will be using custom soundtracks. The background sound effects are dull and boring, I really felt the developers could have put in more effort in this department.

Longevity:

I still play some of my favorite board games and card games, games that I have owned for years. Culdcept Saga is one of those titles that if you enjoy, you too will probably play now and then years down the road.

In terms of play options you’ve got a fairly lengthy single player campaign to beat, after which multiplayer will probably keep you busy for many moons. It is highly advisable to find some fan forums where you can make friends with those players that enjoy the title. Since an average multiplayer game can take upwards of 2 – 3 hours depending on map size, it will be important to have some people on your friends list to pester for games.

A nice touch, you will unlock new cards at the end of multiplayer matches as well, meaning that you can skip over the single player campaign if you prefer playing against real live flesh and blood opponents. While ranked matches (requiring random opponents) are a possibility the leader board seemed pretty barren when I last checked. My suspicion is that Culdcept Saga will be a game most often played against friends you know either in real life or from Live, and very likely will be a lot more fun that way as well.

Another nice option for setting up matches is to set up a “Blind Book” match … each player will be given 50 random cards for their deck, great for “leveling” the playing field.

When it’s all said and done there really is a lot of replayability built into Culdcept Saga because of it’s nature as a board game. At the budget price of $39.99 CDN you really are getting a pretty good bang for your buck, if this type of game is up your alley.

Overall:

As I said at the beginning of my review, Culdcept Saga is very likely going to be a game you will love, or a game you will hate. Those that do love it will squeeze every last drop of enjoyment they can out of the game, very likely playing it for years to come. Those that hate it will probably try the demo once and then never touch the game ever again.

It was hard for me to rate the game; as for me personally it’s a 10/10. Culdcept Saga takes the things I love most about games of chance, board games and Collectable Card Games and wraps it all in one delicious package. Despite the lame graphics and sound, it’s the deep gameplay strategy in Culdcept Saga that I find so addictive, and I personally felt the 40 bucks I paid for the game was a steal. I would gladly have paid full retail price because I know that I’ll get my money’s worth.

In the end, Culdcept Saga is a title where your mileage is going to vary greatly depending on your tastes. After reading this review the game still sounds intriguing then I highly recommend you pick it up. There isn’t really any retail game on the Xbox 360 that is anything like the Culdcept Saga experience, and so far I am not regretting my purchase one bit.