Culdcept BEGINS

It suffers a little from pacing issues, but the meat and potatoes of the game are solid enough to offset that minor hiccup. Fantastic music, an engaging story, and the freedom to build your deck however you want make this a solid pickup for anyone into deckbuilders, even if you are starting to get burnt out on them.

Culdcept Begins is so very difficult to put down. A game only takes around half an hour to play, but one game is never going to be enough. Between players of equal skill, victories will always come down to the thinnest of margins, and then you’ll want to choose a different deck and try a different playstyle to counter your friend the next time. Blissfully microtransaction-free (it would have been very easy to make Culdcept very expensive), Culdcept Begins is everything a good digital board game should be.

Culdcept Begins is a triumphant return for a series that’s been dormant for a decade. The new presentation style may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s the most cohesive visual design in the franchise, with special attention paid to clarity and consistency in its UI befitting such complex mechanics. The narrative is not the most ambitious in the series, yet it does an admirable job of providing context to the board game matches and the cards you play during them. I’m just glad that such a niche franchise has survived so long, and that I have so many fun & frustrating online matches to look forward to in the future.

Culdcept Begins turned out to be a solid entry in the series and really feels great once you build a good deck and go online. The campaign is a bit bland and, for the most part, easy. However, if you look at that more as a tutorial to start to build up decks and prepare for actual human opponents online, it makes more sense. Especially since the multiplayer is so solid.

Culdcept BEGINS successfully revives one of gaming's most unique tabletop strategy franchises with an accessible yet deeply rewarding blend of board game mechanics, deck building, and turn-based combat. While its lengthy matches and grind-heavy progression won't appeal to everyone, its excellent tutorialization, strategic depth, and engaging multiplayer make it an easy recommendation for fans of tabletop games and card battlers.

After 10 years since the last game in the series, Culdcept Begins marks a riveting return. The generic story might have your attention wavering, but the charming cast of characters mostly manages to bring it back into focus. The fun mix of card battling and board game mechanics also pulls you in. There’s tons of depth that I’m constantly uncovering more of as I continue playing. Once a match gets rolling, it’s hard to put the controller down. Although I still do in order to get closer to the screen and get a proper look at the UI elements.

The more the game expands - such as with an increased number of players - the more tedious it becomes. It begins to lack depth, and the variations between individual sessions are too negligible. While the presentation is attractive and the rules are easy to grasp, that may not be a compelling enough reason to play again - and the single-player narrative campaign doesn't help matters.

The card design has significantly degraded, and the readability is terrible. The pacing is faster now, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a board game.

I absolutely LOVED Culdcept for the ps2 and have been waiting YEARS for a new game or even a re-release/remake of the old one. Therefore, I was super exited when Culdcept begins was announced and pre-ordered it as soon as possible. I stayed up till midnight to play it the minute I could. At first it was just as expected, although I was a bit disappointed you didn't make your own character for story mode but no big deal, I assumed you could in multi-player since 4 players all looking identical would be weird. When I had played the introduction and unlocked multi-player, me and my brother ready to play, I saw that this game was online multi-player only, or against cpu's. This totally ruined the game for me, since local multi-player was the way me and my family played Culdcept all the time. I am therefore not touching this game until they update it and add local multi-player (if they even do). I wish I could get my money back but nintendo has a non refundable policy for digital products.