Culdcept is the sort of game that’s easy to play and enjoy once you know what you’re doing, but takes a bit of time to really master. You need to build up a substantial deck, by farming boards for certain cards, and basically try to build up a Monopoly-style empire with monsters to acquire lots of mana. Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver., the demo for the latest game, spends most of its time teaching people how to play.
There are nine total quests in the Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. demo. You need to play the six tutorial quests before you’re allowed to do anything else. You’re given two decks to choose from at the outset. One has only Fire and Earth monsters, and the other Water and Air. Choose wisely, because that’s the deck you’re stuck with for these nine missions. You’ll earn additional cards for your efforts, but can’t customize any of the demo’s decks. The cards and save data can be carried over to a full version of the game.
As a refresher, here’s how Culdcept Revolt works. Each Cepter, a person capable of using magic cards, has a deck available to them. They go around a board, like one found in Monopoly or Fortune Street/Itadaki Street. Certain stretches of the board have the fire, earth, air, or water elements assigned to them, with colors alerting you to a stretch’s color. You can invest mana into spaces you hold to make opponents sacrifice more mana if they land on them and choose not to fight or lose against your creature. Holding multiple spaces in one elemental stretch boosts the strength of the monsters stationed there. The goal is to go around the board, checking in at north, south, east, and west points to earn mana, then return to the start. Once one player reaches a board’s mana goal and returns to the start, that person wins.
Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. starts simply enough. You learn how to move, use spell cards to set specific movement ranges or increase movement, and earn more mana. The demo gradually goes through every element, with each tutorial quest getting a little longer. Eventually, you learn about placing creatures, how it’s beneficial to have them on tiles that correspond to their elements, and that it can be beneficial to have some attacking monsters use weapons against defending monsters and defending monsters use armor.
These mostly go swiftly, until Alicia comes into play. She’s another Cepter, a person capable of using the magic cards and shows up to teach you what it’s like to go against another opponent. This is where Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. begins to drag on a tad, as the goals of these final two tutorial quests are more difficult to reach. In one, you must acquire 200 mana from Alicia. This can take some time, since she has to land on a tile where you have a monster placed. This tutorial’s purpose is twofold, as it teaches you how invest in a creature by spending additional mana on it and defend. In the second, you have to reach 7,000 mana and return to the start as practice for a full game.
Once you get through these Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. initial quests, the game opens up. It takes you through the first three quests in the game, sending you against other Cepters to prove superiority. The first map, for example, pits your avatar against Yuma in an attempt to see who can reach 8,000 mana first. Eventually, you get to face more people on larger maps.
It’s a pretty comprehensive experience. If you’ve never played Culdcept before, you’re definitely going to know how after the first hour you spend with Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. After you go through the three official quests, which can take about three hours or more, you’ll definitely know if it’s something you’ll enjoy. People who own a Japanese Nintendo 3DS and are familiar with previous installments should enjoy Culdcept Revolt. The menus are identical to the previous Nintendo 3DS Culdcept installment and the English voice acting remains. From everything I’ve seen, the demo offers an enjoyable and lengthy experience. It’s a nice bonus if you pre-order, as I did, or happen to have 500 Japanese My Nintendo Platinum Points to spare.
The Culdcept Revolt: Start Dash Ver. is immediately available in Japan, either via pre-ordering Culdcept Revolt from the Nintendo 3DS eShop or spending 500 Platinum Coins through My Nintendo for it. If you own the demo and are awake between 11pm PT/1am CT/2am ET and 5am PT/7am CT/8am ET on May 21, 2016, you can participate in an online multiplayer event. Culdcept Revolt will be released on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan on July 7, 2016.
