Culdcept

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Culdcept (Japanese and Korean title:Culdcept II Expansion)
Developer(s)	Omiya soft
Publisher(s)	NEC Interchannel
Release date(s)	December 8, 2003
Genre(s)	board game,collectible card game
Mode(s)	Single player,Multiplayer
Platform(s)	Sega Saturn, PlayStation 2

Culdcept is a turn-based strategy video game. It has drawn comparisons to other modern strategy titles like Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, and also shares features with non-video games Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering (the game is widely considered to be an even combination of these two games). The series of games saw a large amount of popularity in Japan, and an American version was released for the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2003. Despite low sales in America, the game continues to have a strong following among fans.

In Culdcept, the player takes on the role of a Cepter. Cepters are beings that have the ability to use magical cards to summon creatures, cast spells, and perform various other feats of wizardry. As the player advances throughout the game, they earn additional cards that they can use to create customised "decks" with which to better defeat their foes.

There are 2 modes of play. In Story mode, you play through the minimal plot of the game, making new boards available and earning some cards that are only available through story mode play. Once you complete story mode, the remaining challenge left is to collect various "medals" by meeting some easy and some obscure gaming conditions that can be met with a combination of luck and deck design. The "medal" system is a means to get you to construct some unusual decks, win some unique cards, and open up new optional boards. In Versus mode you can play other people or a mixture of people and computer players. This has to be done on the same gaming console through and suffers from the fact that your friends can see what cards you have in your hand. The card trading ability between players is awkward in that you can only give a player 1 copy of a card that they haven't already earned through gameplay. Also, copying your data around on memory cards can only be done from within the game, and you can only have 1 copy of your saved character and associated constructed decks.

Gameplay resembles Monopoly in that you roll 1 (or 2 dice with spells) to move around on a board. However instead of buying the property and putting houses and hotels on it, you instead summon a creature to defend the property with cards -- the Magic: The Gathering aspect of the game. Each deck you design must contain exactly 50 cards. You may only put at most 4 of a particular card into the deck. If your opponent lands on a property that you own, the opponent either pays you the money or can attack your creature with one of theirs and try to take the property over. (This is much more severe than Monopoly if your land is leveled up and then stolen from you.) There are items and spell cards that can affect the outcome of creature battles. There are 4 colors of property that represent different terrain types -- e.g. green = forest. The more money you invest in the property to level it up (like adding houses or a hotel) the more foresty it gets so a creature of matching color type gets a better defense (more hit points), and you get a much larger "rent".

This game is a great example of a board game that would be too intricate to play out if it weren't a computer game. If you just printed out the cards and tried to play it, it would take forever to figure out everything. But this shows off the power of meshing the two worlds of board games and computer games. Even though this game is very complex, story mode cleverly builds up your knowledge of how all of the factors apply and by the time you reach the end you can figure out everything that is going on.

On April 6, 2006, it was announced that a new entry to the series, Culdcept Saga, was in development. Also available are a series of Manga books based on the original Culdcept game.