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.

Shining Force Neo - PS2

Shining Force Neo is an action RPG developed by SEGA as a throw-back to it's original Shining series. As the title suggests, the "Shining Force" is a sword that the hero finds to defeat the evil monsters conjured by the Clan of the Moon. Max, the hero of the story, begins at a fortress outside of the towns and is being trained by a Captain Graham.

On the first few hours of gameplay I realize that it's very similar to Diablo and Diablo 2. You run through dungeons, collect forcepoints to upgrade your skills and magicks, collect items and "identify" them for your inventory, and you are the sole person that you actually control. While there are other characters that fight with you along screen, they are pretty much NPC's. The monsters swarm on you like D2 and as you cut them down, their energy bars fall like Record of the Loddoss War (for Dreamcast). I miss games as simple as this one. The game boasts "over 90 enemies appear on a single screen", so I have yet to see this. The first boss, which is a bug, attacks with more than 30 bug minions. But still it is quite insane seeing them clobber you.

The game is ranked B+ on 1up.com. I bought it from Gamestop for 10.00 bucks, but hopefully it will be sold for a bit more as it seems rarer than rpg's out there today.