Culdcept DS - NDS

The hardest part about Culdcept DS is finding the control to stop playing Culdcept. This is one of the most addictive games ever made, for geeks and by geeks I presume. Seeing this new version of the game expanded into the NDS made me hesitant to get into the Magic / Monopoly world. The ability to play against your friends on your DS should be good enough a reason to get this game. It's not likely that it will get to the US any time soon, so I will talk a bit about it here.

The game is pretty much the same as Culdcept for PS2 and Xbox 360: Each player gets a hand of 7 cards, a deck of 50 cards, and you duke it out against the other players in dominating the placement of magical creatures on a board. The game play is the same and having a split view of two screen is actually quite convenient.

(Goligan, the staff) I usually specialize in Water creatures, and this time it's more than ever important to get lots them because of the card "Kelpie". This sea-horse like creature is like the Fire Card, "Old Willow" of the PS2 version - it forces the enemy to battle it upon crossing it. Getting that card will save you a lot of time.

I played it for about 20 hours before I beat the game and got my first Medal. I still play it from time to time because it's just that addictive. For a list of the medals, please check out this page. It's in Japanese, but you can google translate it.

http://exsir.exblog.jp/10076879/

• Game Time: 40 hours
• Completed the game 1x

Beating the last boss

The Goddess Culdcept has some words for you upon beating the game.

Culdcept - PS2

Putting Culdcept in front of me is like putting crack in front of a crackhead. It's hard to explain the simplicity or the addiction of the game to people that haven't invested some time into it, but I'll try my best to here. It's a game that' s like Magic the Gathering crossed with Monopoly. That's about it! You (Ceptors) have a deck of cards and you try to conquer the board by placing Creatures on the board. Upon passing them you can improve their land levels, and when an opponent lands on them, they have to pay (in the form of Mana). The Ceptor that reaches the Mana goal first gets the win. Not difficult right? Well throw in items, spells, and elements and you actually have a really intriguing game. 

I started playing it maybe three years back and I couldn't stop playing it for like three months straight. I carefully prepared my deck of 50 cards: a deck for water and wind Creatures, a deck for fire and forest creatures, a deck for non-elementals, and an all-out offence deck. I beat the game sixty or seventy hours into it, but then I discovered the Medals and I tried my best to get those too. Medals are awarded for performing special tasks on the board that are milestone-like. It took specific cards or combination of cards to complete the Medal tasks. You just can't forget the art involved in the game, and the recurring sound effects. Just hearing "Giant Bat vs. Giant Rat" makes me laugh. Everything is epic. Every card has a weakness, a strength, and a function: thats what makes the game so good, the odds of losing are always there, so the wins really give you a sense of accomplishment. But most of all, I got my brother into it, and he had made a character also. We'd duke it out and team up together, some of the greatest hours spent in videogaming. 

And now there's the new Culdcept DS (Japan Import) due to be out. Can't wait to see how the new cards are.