Culdcept and Shadows of the Tusk are two Japanese Saturn games released around 97-98. Culdcept was developed by Omiya Soft. Tusk was published by Hudson. Culdcept Expansion, the PlayStation version of Culdcept, has been released in summer 99. This review is based on the Saturn version; the PlayStation version has got some minor improvements.
Both Culdcept and Tusk are computer collectable card games. The player collects cards by playing and winning matches, and uses the cards collected to build a "deck" which he uses for further matches. Beyond this common point, Culdcept and Tusk are very different games with different strengths.
Culdcept is a merge of Itadaki Street (an improved version of Monopoly on the SFC) with the infamous Magic: the Gathering. The player travels around a track with lands and other spaces. He draws a card every turn. He plays creature cards to occupy lands and attack enemy lands. He plays item cards to aid his creatures in combat. He plays spell cards for extra effects, such as controlling the dice roll. The orthodox strategy involves completing circuits on the board to get the 'salary', investing the money into lands, and collecting "passage fee" from unfortunate opponents who land on the lands without being able to defeat the defending creature. The player wins when he passes the castle (the "Payday" space) while holding a certain amount of assets. Up to four players (including computer AI players) can play.
Culdcept is a rather straightforward merge of its two parents. It inherits most of the elements of the two games, such as "stocks" from Itadaki Street, and a fixed deck size with a 4-card-per-type limit and a draw of 1 card per turn from Magic. (Though, some of the broken rules in Itadaki Street are fixed, and some rules such as land management are improved.) Not surprisingly, the game inherits the strengths, and unfortunately the weaknesses, of both games too. The game has all the fun aspects that make Itadaki Street (or Monopoly) fun, and also the appealing color of deck construction in Magic. However, the waiving of the limit on stock purchase, combined with the possibility of changing the element of a land, makes stock manipulation a sometimes too powerful way of making an absurd amount of money, and with few means to prevent or counter. Also, despite that there are over 300 types of cards, the balance between cards is no better than Magic: there are many everyday cards with no special abilities; there are many expensive cards with useless abilities (such as "Succubus"); there are a few cards that may be (much) too powerful (such as "Gremlin" and "Lightning"), some making the player feel guilty when he plays it on a human opponent (such as "Judgement"); some spells are so powerful that I feel they may dominate the game and make the game lose focus (such as "Meteor", "Earth Shaker" and "Tempest"). Despite that the game features well over 300 cards, in my opinion, if we exclude the useless cards, and do not count multiples of the same card in different colors nor almost identical everyday cards, there are really no more than 80 cards in there, and many of them are powerful spells that make the game lose focus, while many of the rest are different but more or less everyday creatures, differences between which can't really make any difference when faced against the most powerful items, spells, and creatures. In the extreme case, there is the spell-only stock deck, which will undoubtedly defeat any normal deck other than a spell-only deck or a specific anti-spell deck, yet the spell-only deck isn't any fun to play (more than once).
I feel that while Culdcept is initially very fun and captivating, as I collect more cards, it becomes apparent that the game is as balanced and as focused as Magic, no more or no less. Thus, players who like the wild variety of cards and decks in Magic are going to like Culdcept, while players who find Magic too unbalanced and lack of focus will find the same with Culdcept. Culdcept does differ (and better) on subtle points. For example, since the player can only play a limited number of cards in a turn, "hand capacity" becomes a significant factor when considering card costs during deck construction and play. On the Monopoly/Itadaki Street side, Culdcept has 10 maps, and every map plays differently (unlike in Itadaki Street 2, where there are many maps which only look different and play mostly the same), and the movement rules are straightforward. In any case, the idea of the merge between Monopoly and Magic is a brilliant one, and Culdcept is a reasonably good, fun game, clearly more so than Itadaki Street.
I also feel that Culdcept is adhering to its ancestors to a degree which is more than necessary or desirable. For example, retaining the rule in Itadaki Street that the winner who has accumulated enough assets has to pass Start to actually win seems to do nothing other than needlessly prolonging this already long game. Using the same rule concerning targeting exemption of global-effect attack spells as Magic (namely, that magic resistance offers no protection against global-effect spells) seems unnatural, and eventually leads to the problem of the overly powerful spell-only book. (That rule in Magic originated as a side-effect of a rules clarification rather than as an original design intention.) Some powerful spells (such as "Earthquake") also tend to cause the game to drag on without a conclusion if used rampantly.
Shadows of the Tusk is a mostly original game. The players fight a battle between two parties of characters on a map of squares. The basic game system is similar to the orthodox Japanese console "S-RPG" system (Fire Emblem, Shining Force), with the separation of movement and attacks (inherited from Power of the Hired). However, both the map and the movement rate of characters have been drastically scaled down: to a 5x5 map with characters moving either 1 or 2 spaces per turn. While most Japanese console S-RPGs are, in my opinion, entirely unplayable in terms of strategies on the map, with the scaling down, Tusk has achieved the original playability intended in such games: battle formations and forming defensive walls, positioning of units, holding of key points, and most of all an intense, tight battle from start to finish, without the boring, tedious marching (several turns away from the reach of any enemy) so prevalent in so many Japanese console S-RPGs, even the "better" ones. Here, a slow movement rate (namely "1") is really a tactical disadvantage, rather than merely being a boring inconvenience (for increasing marching time). (In orthodox S-RPGs, since you want your party to stay close together, a "slow" movement rate of 3 or 4 spaces would not be much of a handicap, since the character can still 'reach' anything that is being engaged with your party. Most such games don't have a tight turn limit, so the speed at which your party marches is of little strategic significance.)
The player selects his party of 8 characters out of a pool of 40. He can start the game with up to 30 manna cost of characters, and the rest are put in reserve, waiting to be summoned during play. The player designates one of the starting members as the leader. The match is won by defeating the enemy leader, or by the second-moving player when no decision is reached within 30 turns. The squares where the leaders start on (5 manna per turn) and the 5 center row squares (1 manna each per turn) support the player who occupies them with manna every turn. With this manna (and any manna left over during initial deployment), the leader can summon the reserve characters, and the characters on the board can use certain special attacks. The play centers around characters maneuvering to strike at opposing characters and occupy manna areas. The kind of fast-paced attrition battle carries some flavor of the battle system in the classic board game Titan.
While 40 characters may seem like a small number compared to the over 300 cards in Culdcept, this is only superficial. The characters (and their abilities) are all quite balanced with their costs: I have not found any characters as useless as "Succubus" or "Mimic", or as overly useful as "Gremlin" or "Decoy". Every character has some (useful) special ability, so that no one character is very 'everyday'. More importantly, this is a game with its focus on characters maneuvering to strike at opposing characters and damaging them while hampering the opponent's ability to strike back, and none of the abilities on the characters go so far as to disperse this focus. Unlike in Culdcept, where the items and spells that expert players really use when they are serious (such as "Lightning" and "Unsummon") tend to ignore altogether the identity of most creatures in the game, here in Tusk the identity of the characters is always important.
Moreover, because many characters have multiple abilities, and because of the intricate game system, many characters have multiple strategic roles, or have the flexibility to be put to any of several uses according to the tactical situation (in sharp contrast to some collectable card games, where there are tons and tons of virtually useless cards). For example, Richard (the hero character) has the leadership ability that increases the attack strength of all friendly characters when you make him the party leader, but he also has a "cut off" attack which is very powerful against enemy hordes. (The leader cannot attack when he is summoning, so Richard will find less use for his powerful attack when he is being the leader.) Content wise, I feel that a single character in Tusk has as much substance as 2 or 3 cards in other collectable card games. Thus, even though 40 may seem like a small number, when we look carefully, there is no less substance in here than in other games in the genre.
Both Culdcept and Tusk are centered on vs. play, against human opponents. Both games have poor computer player intelligence (AI), although the stupid computer players have a slightly better chance of winning in Culdcept because of the luck factors in the game. (Culdcept AI makes hopeless attacks, and the map path selection algorithm can't deal with the deadly special power of the Old Willow and Kelpie - a rather straightforward task undone. Tusk, instead of using a real AI search algorithm, uses the primitive algorithm used in other S-RPGs such as Shining Force.) While some players like the idea of collecting the cards, personally I feel that card collection is a tedious, boring process, while deck construction and the playing of the game itself is more fun. Both games require the player to play a large number of matches to gain cards. Tusk even does not give the players any new cards in vs. play, in essence requiring the player to play a large number of easy and possibly uninteresting matches against the stupid computer player. However, Tusk does put the player up against random, unpredictable computer decks, unlike in Culdcept where the player selects his computer opponents, and to some extent the opposing "books" (decks). Vs. computer play in Culdcept may be more fun to play because of the richer board game elements, but a match takes longer (usually 1/2 to 1 hour, as opposed to 5-15 minutes in Tusk), and that may become boring in clearly won positions. In any case, having to play games to get more cards is far more economic than endlessly shelling out real money for new cards. (^_^) For vs. human play, Culdcept supports face-to-face games only, while Tusk also supports XBAND-modem play, but I think it works only if you are in Japan. The short playing time of a game of Tusk is a large convenience, while the longer game of Culdcept gives the player more satisfaction for winning. One possible shortcoming of Tusk is that some players may feel that the importance of undercutting your opponent's deck so that one gets to go first involves too much luck, while in Culdcept a player may be frustrated when his strategy behind his carefully-constructed deck is thwarted by poor card draws and dice rolls.
The (1-player) story mode in Culdcept consists of 10 matches while that of Tusk consists of 8. Neither tells any substantial story: Tusk has an epic story written on (scattered throughout) the cards, and the story mode tells only a small scenario within it. The story mode in Culdcept feels longer because each match is much longer, and there is a higher incentive to re-play it because the player can get random, new cards. That in Tusk is really not much more than a tutorial, but there are the two other 'proper' vs. com modes. Some players feel very dissatisfied with Tusk because of its "inadequate" story mode. (Though I agree that the story mode of Tusk is inadequate, it is far from being a large part of the game, or even that of the game story.)
Both games have pleasant graphics and sounds, well adequate for playability-centered games. (If one must make a comparison, those in Culdcept are better.) Tusk also has a cool opening movie. Tusk is a bit slow in loading, though the game plays speedily with the battle animations turned off. There are some minor bugs and inconveniences (such as not being able to cancel a mistaken move at an intersection on the map) in Culdcept. Both games have abundant on-line help, and quite streamlined controls. Except that, in Culdcept, you can see an opponent's cards in his hand only during his turn. Because knowledge of opponent's hand contents is often critical, I feel that needing to closely observe opponents' turns and memorize cards is quite stressful. The user-interface of Tusk is about as good as how it can be done (save for that a card can't go into more than one deck at the same time, which is really a design decision).
For players who like Monopoly, Itadaki Street or other board games, Culdcept is a game rich in such elements, while for players who like Magic: the Gathering, Culdcept is a more involved game with some similar strengths. For players who appreciate the concept of deck construction, Shadows of the Tusk, with its more balanced cards and simpler, more concise chess-like game play, offers the players an intense match between decks. Because of the Western origin of the concept of collectable card games, there is a fair amount of English text in both games. However, Culdcept is a bit more complex, and it may be difficult for players who cannot read Japanese to figure out the rules of the game, especially the fine points. Tusk would be no problem for such players, with an entirely English menu interface (to the extent that some Japanese players who cannot read English find it inconvenient). Both games are playability-centered collectable card games recommended for hardcore gamers, but they are best if one can find human opponents.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 08:48
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