Culdcept Revolt Review (3DS)
Culdcept Revolt celebrates Culdcept‘s 20th anniversary and, I’m ashamed to admit, I’d never heard of Culdcept before and thought that this was a brand new IP. Oops! The latest iteration in the long-running card-battling series is exclusive to 3DS, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.
People with the ability to control the cards of Culdcept, known as Cepters, are being mercilessly hunted down by the cruel count of a sealed-off city. With no way out other than to fight, a small group of Cepters known as the Free Bats rally together to either escape or murder the count. The protagonist has lost his memories and fights to regain them, but also because he was wronged by the count and wishes for others to be free, too. Culdcept Revolt has an engaging plot ripe with mystery and action, and I’m surprised by just how enticing I found it to be.
An engaging plot ripe with mystery and action.
Culdcept Revolt is a turn-based card-battler which throws a lot of information at you in its early tutorials, but an hour or so in you’ll understand the basics and be strategising your next move with ease. It can be pretty difficult, even in its early stages, and if you’re just throwing down cards without any thought put into them then you’ll quickly find yourself in a bind. You’ll have a deck of 50 cards, and you gain more cards through winning battles or buying booster packs, and they’ll be a mix of monsters and skills.
Once your roll the die and get moving, you’ll find Culdcept Revolt hard to put down.
Each monster has one of four elements, and the grids you play on have squares with specific elements attached to them. Whilst you can put a monster on any square, putting them on a different element means that your card won’t be able to be used to its full potential. Thankfully, you can exchange monsters during your turn with one of the correct element when you have one.
Skill cards can be used to deal damage to opponent cards or debuff them in other ways such as restricting their movement, or they can be used to buff yourself by giving one of your monsters more damage or health in a battle, or allowing them to attack first. Once your roll the die and get moving, you’ll find Culdcept Revolt hard to put down, with the likely reason for closing your 3DS being due to how lengthy battles can be. There’s online multi-player too if you’re itching to test your skills against another player.
Kinu Nishimura is back to work her magic with her easily identifiable and unique art style.
Do you recognise those beautiful character designs? Kinu Nishimura, who also worked on the Zero Escape series, is back to work her magic with her easily identifiable and unique art style. So many cards to choose from means a whole lot of art to look at, and the card art style seems to be a bit older than Kinu’s art. I assume that this is because many of the cards are based on existing Culdcept cards, as opposed to all being created fresh for Culdcept Revolt — I’m not complaining though.
The stages are in 3D and are complete with pixels of characters and monsters alike, and it all looks rather brilliant. It’s simple enough at a glance, but the stage can look very different midway through a match thanks to how hectic and long battles are. Culdcept Revolt is dubbed in English but not many of the lines are spoken, with most dialogue being when the announcer states the status of a match or content of a booster pack. The soundtrack is fine but unmemorable, and consists mostly of orchestral tracks but they don’t feel like they have any real kick to them — the tracks are a bit uninspired.
Battles do get a little on the long side sometimes though.
Culdcept Revolt is a solid card-battler that’ll easily keep you occupied for a long time, especially if you take the fight online, but I don’t expect online to be flush with activity. Gorgeous art and a decent story keep the single-player offerings moving forward, and there’s a bunch of free battles and side-missions you can partake in too. Battles do get a little on the long side sometimes though, which makes it harder to binge hours on at a time, but if you play this with a couple of friends I imagine you can have an incredibly fun time.
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