Game:

Culdcept Saga (2006)

Duration: 41:47

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1

Oh right, i started playing this for real... except not really... because time... and video... and laziness... and descriptions! Oh, the descriptions! The inhumanity!

...I think I'm doing a horrible job of priming any potential onlookers for the complete excitement I can't really properly convey when it comes to both this game's very existence and also the impending release of Culdcept Revolt. (Summer 2017! Yes! ...in October! ... ... ...it's still in the 90s temperature-wise around here, and the humidity still won't go away, so... sure!)

This is a cool game, I swear. Stop looking at me like that! I'm only a little crazy, and that's not what this is right now. Probably!

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As stated previously, Culdcept is NOT Monopoly. If anything, it's a different video board game that ALSO gets (slightly more fairly) compared to Monopoly. I mean, of course, Fortune Street... which is itself no stranger to long-winded uploads on my part. (I'm sensing a pattern here...)

I mean, it's clearly no accident that a lot of the basic gameplay elements and general direction of gameplay line up like so, because clearly someone asked themselves: "What if Fortune Street had a collectible trading card game element to it?"

As such, the card-playing elements get the lion's share of the attention and the big scary numbers from Fortune Street are set a bit along the wayside to form the game's boring backbone without actually getting in the way or making people run for their lives. (They totally should, though, because they're still out to get you in a big way...)

This can be partially seen in the fact that changes to numbers, despite being the main point of the game, namely the goal and what lets you do... basically anything... the game interface doesn't really lend itself to highlighting their changes at every juncture.

To break it down with the greater benefit of hindsight, though, territory is what makes the Magic (still super confusingly called "G" and represented as if by physical coins) really start flowing... sure, taking tolls from passerby is a huge injection of free (magic!) currency into your (magical?) pocket, but the REAL point of interest is that the spaces you stake out are themselves worth a tidy sum, even before you do anything to them or get others to match. (More than any creatures we've seen summoned, in fact.)

Then there's paying to improve the land itself, which looks like it costs a lot, especially as the levels get higher, but you'll still be increasing its inherent value and thus your actual net worth, making it a bit of a no-brainer despite how much the game's own feedback to players seems to feel like it's hiding this detail just out of sight at all times.

The "catch" and indeed the ACTUAL gameplay then revolves around making sure that for all your pumping of liquid assets into your turf... that you can actually hold ONTO that ground, because all it takes is for an opponent to waltz on up and wipe out the defender, and suddenly all that spending you did is now padding THEIR bottom line, leaving you with nothing to show for it.

Oh, and THEN they get to extort a toll out of anyone else who lands there and can't unseat the critter that tossed you on the curb. So you can see that there's a weird new precariousness to the game balance as you try to unseat your rivals while spending as little as you can in doing so.

So... it's NOT Fortune Street either. Neat!

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Speaking of interface... even before we ACTUALLY begin the game at hand, there are a TON of menus you can poke at. Too many, actually... it's all a bit overwhelming and not all that informative about what parts actually affect what we're doing right now... as very few of them actually will. We can play dress-up and we can change our deck, but I think tinkering too much with what few cards Rilara gave us and no real overarching mind (or capacity) for strategy just yet might be a bit of a mistake. (I'm sure I'll get to make plenty of those!)

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Speaking of mistakes... the plot! (I'm kidding! ...am I?) But seriously, I'm done fiddling with menus and stuff at about 6:08.

It's weird that it's still "Faustina's" cards, despite all the customization we could do to them while we've been here in a cell, I guess. And how did our buddy known as "Slave Trader" expect us to do any... er... Cepter stuff without any cards of our own?

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Actual gameplay starts at 10:37.

Oh, Koenig... poor, poor Koenig... even I couldn't have predicted just how badly his day could go, but in a game like this, I think that's to be expected. Luck is one thing, but stacking the deck against your opponent to the best of your ability is another, and the two often go hand in hand, so you can't really divide up where to blame misfortune and where to curse the names of your opponents...

This DOES actually show us what happens when you run out of cash... er... magic. It's not nearly as dramatic as what happens in Fortune Street. (I'd say it's actually a fair bit crueler!)