Culdcept Revolt -- #1. Learning to Remember
0Obviously, the only reason I would ever be overly motivated to do something in terms of video on demand projects in anywhere near a timely fashion would be because of some kind of impending doom.
Specifically, the 3DS and Wii U eShops are doomed. Eroding little islands of populated content where only the strong survive until finally there's nothing left of any of it.
This game. Is amazing. This series has always been pretty impressively and outlandishly strong on its core concepts... well, at least for those who have ever heard of it. And then are willing to follow it where it wants to lead them, because there's a lot of compounding systems and elements all eager to wring your neck unless you're prepared to take control of them first and never let go.
I'm really selling this, aren't I? I should totally be in marketing! Drop me a line and a check, ad moguls! I've got you covered!
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I'm also not blind to the fact that I've already BEGUN a Culdcept-related project, but never actually saw it all the way through... but... here's the weird thing. Culdcept Saga... still exists! It's not going to be TOO significantly harder to get into than it already was.
But Revolt? They couldn't get rid of the things fast enough at retail... now they're all scattered to the winds. Your last, best chance to get in on the ground floor on this particular game lies in the fact that Nippon Ichi Software America has at least the wherewithal to do a final, last-ditch fire sale strategy, since any intangible copies they don't sell out now won't be selling anyway, so...
Whether or not you're sold on a multiplayer-focused card/board/economics game, I can unequivocally recommend it, even as a solo experience. It's got like... insane longevity even as a single player adventure, because... just when you think you've flipped your last card and turned the final table... there's more! They just won't quit! There's like three or four JRPG plot trains all rammed into one another because they couldn't get them out of the station fast enough for some kind of... portly controller fellow to tolerate.
And while the writing isn't always gold and doesn't always seem to have the room it needs to breathe between the actual meat of the gameplay, it definitely won't leave even the most jaded "oh, I already know where this is going" stickler starving for literally cannot-be-expected swerves.
The AI might feel like it's pulling weird fast balls on you from time to time, and it's never FUN to get picked on by inscrutable faceless foes (that's not true! they have crazy detailed anime faces courtesy of Kinu Nishimura!) you can't complain about giving you a raw deal all the time. It just means that your strategy wasn't strong enough to suffer a little brute force. You're not gonna let a couple dozen MACHINE scripts out-think you, right?
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Anyway, what follows here is a procession of little scenarios designed to teach you the ropes without it being super dry or dense while also being careful not to skimp on the absolutely most crucial bits for the sake of attention.
The delivery method is weirdly more intriguing than it needed to be, considering there's not really a payoff the likes of which you might've been expecting... but I think that's also for the best, because getting card coaching tips from some absently omniscient force that may or may not be the reason behind the name of the series at large isn't exactly a strong motivator either.
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The really crazy thing here, if I do say so myself... is the way that the bottom screen is utilized. I mean, it's pretty "well, that seems obvious" as far as having an information-laden collection of panels goes, I suppose, but you'd be surprised how non-groundbreaking such things need to be when they're doing their jobs at peak efficiency.
But, no, that's not what I find fascinating, actually... it's the way in which that screen is divided up into discrete portions that pull their own important duty as pieces of the puzzle that is the visual user experience, feeding you information you'll need easy access to if you want to wage fiscal dominance over your myriad card-slinging adversaries.
They actually end up using the pieces of that tiny little pixelated real estate in shockingly spartan and efficient fashion, although they're not always entirely consistent about it. But MOST of the game revolves around splitting it down the middle and conveying up to two persistent sources of feedback at basically all times, swapping out to suit the context.
Or sometimes it's just a picture. Or sometimes there's a narrow status bar on top or some tabs to cycle through as you prefer at the bottom.
What's ACTUALLY shocking here is that... because of the "excessive" width of the top screen, it's much closer to being a wide display than you'd think, so stacking it on a smaller one doesn't give you a convenient vertical video. But if you chop stuff up and glue it back together?!