Culdcept (PS2)

[NevStar]

I'm a little late to the party with this one, as it's been out for almost half a year, but I did a search & the only reference to it was an Anxiety post that went unresponded to.

In high school, I was a big Magic: The Gathering addict. This addiction faded once I went to college & discovered more 'adult' ways to pass the time, like for instance, drinking cheap domestic beer until you pass out. I was briefly hooked into MTG again when they released their online version, but the number of tools & morons online made me retreat again to the sweet, sweet silence of solitude. (Incidently, I have about $100 worth of MTGO cards if anyone's interested in buying them)

I saw Culdcept this weekend sold used at EB for $17.99 & I remembered all the reviews that said it was "the best game you've never heard of." Now I can't admit that I never thought to myself, "Self, you know what would be great? If you could somehow combine Magic with Monopoly!" But somehow, it works. I've only put about four hours into this so far, but I can tell this is going to hook me for a while.

You can look anywhere else for a description of the gameplay, so I'll be brief. You travel around a gameboard, through the roll of a die. When you land on a property, you can summon a creature from your hand of cards to guard it. When the opponent lands on that same square, he can either pay a toll, or sumon a creature to fight it. Battles are enhanced by item & spell cards as well as the properties of the square itself. It's the proverbial 'easy to learn, a lifetime to master.'

The game doesn't support online play, which is unfortunate, but since it's been established that I hate people, I'm not too upset by this. It does allow you to create a rather complex AI character, although I haven't really looked at this much.

Apparently, Culdcept is huge in Japan, but this will likely be the last we'll see of it here, as NEC has decided to close it's American branch which distributed it. On the plus side, my little $18 game may have just turned into a collector's item.

As an added bonus, the manual is filled with unintentionally funny Engrish:

- "Maise (weapon)"
- "Mana -Add 50 times go-arounds"
- "Leaser armor (protector)"

At the lower price, this game is definately worth picking up, just because it's something original & different.