Culdcept has apparently been quite the phenomenon in Japan for several years now. Thanks to NEC taking a risk and bringing this title to America, I now understand what all the fuss was about. The title is truly equal parts CCG and board game, and handling either section poorly will generally result in a defeat. On the other side of the coin, it's a sweet feeling defeating an enemy who had better cards than you through a combination of planning, skill, and luck.

Before entering a battle gamers need to put together their deck of 50 cards. The library to choose from is initially extremely small (indeed, you're stuck with your beginning 50 for the first battle), but after a while you will have hundreds of cards to choose from, each one worthwhile in certain situations. This planning phase cannot be overlooked, and it's where Culdcept shows its CCG roots.

Cards come in three basic types: creatures, items, and spells. Creatures have strength and health stats, and occasionally have special abilities such as dealing a critical hit to other creatures of a certain element, or even wilder special skills. Items are used to modify a creature's health or strength before a battle. Plenty are straightforward, such as a 50HP boost, but again, some offer up more complex options. Spell cards are what really mix up the gameplay. There's the standard heal/attack spells that target creatures, but also cards that allow the computer to control one of your human competitors for a couple rounds, or a mine that halves the magic of the unfortunate player to land there.

Once you've built a deck suited to the board you're going to be playing on, the contest itself begins. Landing on an unoccupied square gives gamers a chance to place one of their creatures. If you land on a square that an opponent has already claimed, you can either pay the toll, or battle their creature with one of your own. Win, and the territory becomes yours. Lose, and you pay the toll anyway, and probably lose that creature. Landing on a square you already occupy gives you the chance to level up that territory, increasing it's toll, and the amount of magic it adds to your total.

Players make laps around the board, laying down and battling creatures, until one player reaches the required amount of total magic and returns to the starting position. Total magic is essentially the combined worth of all the creatures you have in play, so defeating an enemy's creature through smart use of a powerful item can literally turn everything around, if the territory had been leveled up. Sometimes you'll only need 5000 total magic to be declared the winner, and one square leveled up to the max can be worth over 2000. Yeah.

Culdcept appeals heavily to the collector inside all (well, most) gamers. It's the same reason Tony Hawk titles have a massive checklist of stuff to do and collect in every level, and the same reason Pokemon has been the phenomenon that it has. You have access to a grid that shows you all the cards you own, and empty space for the cards you've yet to acquire. Even hours in, that grid won't be full, I assure you. There's also a daunting list of medals to earn through a variety of ways (not losing one creature battle the entire match, never using items, etc). Even if the board game itself wasn't as engaging and fun as it is, Culdcept would have kept me coming back to try to unlock some new medals or get my grubby hands on some brand new cards to work into my deck. I've spent more time than I care to admit just lording over my cards making different decks with various devious schemes.

It's worth noting that despite the praise and score Culdcept is getting from me, the title most certainly isn't for everyone. Anyone who used to (or still does) own a shoebox full of Magic: The Gathering cards, or anyone who owns Disgaea, Suikoden, or any other niche title, is going to love Culdcept to death. That being said, the matches can occasionally drag, even for a fan of slower paced games such as myself. I never minded, however. It was always worth it thanks to that stack of new cards I acquired at the end, or the spell trickery I was able to unleash to turn the tide in my favor.

I'm a firm believer that more developers need to take risks and try new ideas, and Culdcept is the proof that someone out there making games needs to keep up that tradition. Videogames are about having fun, at their most basic level. Culdcept has it in spades.