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Cladun X2 is a game about grinding, and I mean serious grinding! The plot is this for
your sins you've been trapped in Arcanus Cella a miniature world where you must fight in
endless dungeons, you'll come across other characters who are stuck there too.
This game isn't about plot it's about endless customization. You have a selection of classes
to pick for your main character, warrior, wizard, Saint, Guardian, Ranger, Merchant,
and Swordmage. And these classes all have different abilities, magic, and job skills.
Not to mention different stats. Then you pick the general look of character and personality
trait. The personality traits don't have a huge effect on the game, their more for fun,
they influence conversations. You'll also be able to further edit you characters appearance,
and even the look of items as much as you want from the games menu at any time.
The dungeons is what the game is entirely focused toward. You might be suprised to find
that the dungeons, and with practise you can even finish some of the earlier ones in 30
seconds. But this is a big plus about the game. The formula goes a little something
like this. You beat a few dungeons gain experience for you and your party, find items, gold.
And use these to help you progress so you can do it all over again with harder dungeons
you unlock as you beat the old ones. The music in the dungeons, I feel tempted
to say is maybe the best I've ever heard in an rpg with the possible exception of Final
Fantasy Mystic Quest, although there seems to be more variety in this games music. Nothing
makes you feel more like an adventure than this soundtrack.
The monsters all have a lot of retro charm just like everything else in the game. You
have frogs that will jump about and attack you with their long tongue, knights are impervious
to damage from the front, spiders that shoot web at you and slow you down. Giant boars
that have attack patterns where they will run at you. nimble archers that shoot arrows.
Cats that have a deadly claw attack, and some wierd things I can't even describe.
In the time you're not fighting in dungeons, you'll soon be able to access all the other
world locations either by navigating around the tiny island of Arcanus Cella or simpling
selecting the location from your menu.
Their are different weapons types in the game: Swords allow to you to have 2 quick attacks
with a third slower more poweful attack, by pressing the attack button 3 times in a row.
Daggers allow for a lot of repeated quick attacks but have very little range. Blunt
weapons like axes and clubs allow for a powerful slow attack but you can't defend yourself
with a shield when using them. Spears attacks are similar to swords but slower, with longer
range, and are more tricky to hit with. Bows are very useful as they allow you to spam
attacks with less chance of getting hit, but they little range. And staffs allow magic
attacks which take a while between attacks to recharge, but can have elemental based
effects certain enemies will be weaker against which reminded me a lot of something like
Pokemon.
You can use the shop to buy new weapons, shields, armour, and artifacts. But we'll talk more
about artifacts in a minute. You can find plenty of weapons in the dungeons, but you'll
have the option to buy some in the shop too. You'll find yourself contantly using different
weapons as you switch between different characters with different classes, and job skills. For
instance for my main character the comiccon who is a sword mage, I find particuly good
with Swords, the Spear, and the Bow. Which are all the swordmages abilities.
But this game has a party system, you can create as many characters of any character
class you want at any time from the menu. Their usefullness and the size of your party
is determined by which magic circle you use. And as with everything else, that is determined
by how many dungeons you've beaten. The key here is constant progression and changing
of tactics.
Magic Circles are perhaps the most important game mechanic. They allow you to constantly
change up you're parties stats, and focus on different strategies. For instance. You
place the relevant artifcacts you find in dungeons onto the relevant spot on the magic
circle. For instance Defense artifcacts go on defense spots, attack artifacts go on attack
spots. As you beat more dungeons you'll gain access to more magic circles. The best thing
you can do, is to change up your characters every few dungeons, and change the magic circles
and equipment. You only ever fight as one character, but you can swap your main character
to be anyone from your party. The Magic circle is a great game mechanic, that will have you
obsessively looking for the best strategies throughout the game, and it adds a lot of
variation too.
In dungeons, you'll come across bosses. This is the second one. It's a giant tree, like
any boss it has a lot of poweful attacks and will kill you in seconds if you don't come
up with some tactics first. I guarentee you, you'll want to come back for more punishement
you get. For instance my tactic was to use to use the fire magic attack a few time before
my SP ran out, to atttack him with the spear, uses my flame weapon magic, and of course
to stay mobile. Boss battles are often over quickly, just like the dungeons themselves,
so quick reflexes, and a lot of skiddings to avoid hits is your best chance to give
yourself a half second to think about the best move.
But wait you'll very soon unlock the option to have even more grinding on top of your
regular dungeons. With something called a rangeon. A randomly created dungeon with 99
floor. There are two types of rangeon Neogon and Trigeon. A trigeon basically being 3 neogeons.
So if you think you're good, think again trigeons are brutal, and with this many floors would
take you a very long time to beat compared to the regular dungeons.
To progress to the next floor inside a trigeon or neogeon you'll come across gates. These
include Angel Gates, and Devil Gates. And they can change at any time, so if you chose
a devil gate, then you might be lucky and it will turn into an angel gate randomly!
The gates determine the monster level, item drop rate, and rare title rate. Which is a
big reason to fight in neogeons and Trigeons in the first place to find some decent titles
for your equiptment.
Having breezed through several dungeons by having a carefully managed party, I thought
I should take on a trigeon. Yeah...you may not want to get cocky in a game like this
you're going to end up having your *** handed to you on a silver plater. Which just makes
you want to come back for more punishment even more, so you can beat it. At certain
point you'll have more cutscenes for the story. And sometimes these conversations can be pretty
funny. It is a bit of shame that you don't get to see more of these. As the conversations
are different depending on your personality, a few lines of dialogue between my narcissitc
main character the comicicon and the others in the game where pretty damn funny, but the
focus is on grinding as I said at the start of this review so don't expect many of these
moments. All in all I had a lot of fun with this game, and enjoyed grinding more than
I have in a very long time. And if thats what you're after this game has in spades, set
to charming retro graphics, and a truly beautiful soundtrack that had me almost brings a tear
to your eye (cartoon angry overlay text: TOTALLY MANLY TEARS!). And it's biggest appeal might
also be in biggest flaw, in that it's a gigantic grin-fest, if you're after more you wont really
find it. If not this is probably your dream role playing game!