Culdcept Central - True Achievements Gamer Review

True Achievements Gamer Review - Divine Atropos (4/5)

Culdcept Saga is a great game, albeit a little repetitive. Combine some elements of Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly, and you have Culdcept.

The basis of the game is simple: reach the target total magic goal, and get back to the castle. Now, there are various ways to gain magic. You can expand territory by summoning creatures to defend it, you can cast spells that instantly give you magic (or allow you to steal it from other players), or an opponent can land on your territory. Should that happen, they can battle your creature with one of their own if they so choose, and if they win, they take the territory. If they lose or do not battle, they pay a toll based on what level the territory is.

Movement in the game consists of 3 phases. First, if you have any spells to cast, you can cast them when your turn starts (with limitations). After that, you roll a die to determine where you move. There are various different squares you can land on depending on what map you're using. When your movement is finished, if you landed on territory you can summon a creature to claim it, or to invade an enemy land. You can also do some other special things based on your own lands you've passed via the 'territory' command. There is much more detail on movement, combat, etc. in the manual or in game help functions.

The story is nothing groundbreaking or extremely special, but it does the job. The voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, but that seems to be the case in most games, doesn't it? Along the story path, you're given a few different choices, but all it really affects is the order in which you complete the game. You won't miss anything by taking any specific path first.

This game is long. Prepare to dump some serious time into card farming, book customization (think Magic decks), avatar part collecting, etc. The early parts of the story mode can be incredibly difficult and frustrating because you start with a pretty inferior book. Along the way you'll gather over 400 different cards of varying rarity and usage, so there's a lot to do for completionists. However, even though there are tons of ways to customize your book, there actually are some book setups that are nearly unbeatable in story mode. I went through the last 75% of the game without ever being in danger of losing a match once I built this one book. There's a lot of challenge in store if you don't do that, though.

For those that value achievement efficiency over gameplay, this game won't be for you. Going through story mode, which is long enough, will get you a good bit of achievements, but after that it's less than ideal. Some of them are grindy (like the card collection ones), some of them can be challenging, and some are downright silly (collect all avatar parts, I'm looking your direction). There are online achievements as well, but the online community of this game isn't the same as it was in the past, so you may want to find a boost partner for some of them.

I personally love games like this, and it was definitely worth the purchase for all the time I got out of it. If you don't like grinding, or long/complicated games this one might not be for you. If you do enjoy those sorts of things, this game will be right up your alley.