Culdcept Saga Demo

[Lizardman]

The demo is out!

It is on the Demo Disc from OXM.

oxm.p2technology.com/article/interact/months-disc

[Moptop]

Whoa. WHOA.

Is that on retail shelves as we speak?

[Captain Garak]

I can't answer as to whether or not it's on shelves now, but note that the site says that this demo is in the "Holiday" issue. The last issue I received (by subscription) is the December 2007 issue, and I have not yet received the Holiday issue in the mail. So, if you're looking for this on store shelves and buying it only for the demo, make sure you pick up the Holiday issue with the "Rock Band" cover, and NOT the December issue with the "Call of Duty 4" cover.

[Moptop]

Gotcha, thanks! I'll take a look around when I'm out today. If I find it, you guys will be the first to know..

[TopCat]

I'd like to hear your guys' impressions of the demo when it lands. I hope they did a good job with the localization.

[Captain Garak]

I received my copy of the Holiday OXM on Saturday, and plugged in the demo tonight (since I spent most of my Saturday playing Assassin's Creed). The map is a simple 5x5 square, and the demo deck appears to be mainly yellow and blue creatures, with several neutrals thrown in for good measure. The winning goal is to reach 4,000 TG, and my demo game lasted twenty rounds before I reached the goal.

On the positive side, the demo really taught me that I have missed playing Culdcept for quite a while! I could certainly do without the "taunts" issued by the other player almost every round, but on the whole, the demo appears to have been created quite well. I'm sure that I'll play it at least a few more times before the full game comes out.

[Captain Garak]

Well, since making my last post on the demo, I have played a total of five complete games (won the first, lost the next three , and won the last). With that, I have to say that I am tremendously impressed with this product, provided that the tightness of the demo is something that gets transferred to the full game.

TopCat, you asked about the localization in the demo, and I think that it's quite good. First, I haven't yet run across a written description of a card's abilities that I've had difficulty understanding. This could sometimes be a challenge in the PS2 version of Culdcept, but that shortcoming seems to have been corrected in the demo. Abilities are written clearly, and on the screen showing which cards have been "won" by the player after completing a game, there are subsequent screens providing clear descriptions of abilities like, "Scroll Attack" and "at the end of the Round". Second, there are a lot of little things that have also received attention. For example, on the battle screen, the announcer now utters the word, "versus" between the card names, as opposed to simply announcing the two creatures that are squaring off against each other in battle. Also, when drawing the seventh card into your hand, the announcerette says, "Discard a card", instead of "Discard your card", which was something I found mildly annoying in the PS2 version. I find these to be very encouraging signs that we have the chance for a "good" translation of this game for the US market.

Now, I imagine that Culdcept Saga will be criticized in the "review" media for not being next-gen enough from the graphics side. Frankly, when comparing the PS2 version of Culdcept (out of my PS3) side-by-side with the Culdcept Saga demo, the graphical improvement is quite striking. Granted, you still won't experience a lot of animation in battle sequences (still card versus card, with a small amount of animation representing each creature's attack), but the clarity of the artwork, the board and battle backgrounds and the playing board pieces is refreshing.

I could go on, but I'll close by saying that this demo has really whetted my appetite for the retail version. If you're interested in Culdcept Saga, particularly if you played/enjoyed the original Culdcept on the PS2, it would be worth your while to seek out the Holiday edition of OXM and try out the demo (or, hope that it gets released on Marketplace sometime soon). Now, the hardest thing for me will be to wait for this title to be released sometime in January or February!

[Lizardman]

Awesome! Nice review, I can't wait to play this game!

[Captain Garak]

I've played the demo a few more times since last writing about it, and there are a couple of new peculiarities that I have noticed with regard to the behavior of the AI.

As was the case with the PS2 version, the AI sometimes makes unusual moves in the Culdcept Saga demo. On two occasions, when my opponent stopped in a red square and was holding a Red Ogre in her hand, she chose to cast a Green Ogre instead. On both occasions, on a later turn, the AI used a Territory command to exchange the Green Ogre for a Red Ogre, which seems to me to be "wasting" that command (since casting the Red Ogre in the first place would not have resulted in needing to exhange the creatures using a later Territory command).

I've also seen the AI not take the special abilities of creatures into account when setting up for a battle. In the most recent game that I played, the AI cast a creature with strength equal to the hit points of my Gas Cloud to begin a battle. However, since the Gas Cloud halves all damage dealt to it, the attack was doomed to failure even before it was launched, unless an item was also used to increase the attack value. Even with useable items in the AI's hand, none were used, and the attack failed.

So, although the demo is definitely impressive, there are still some questions I have with regard to AI-related decision-making. Of course, this could have something to do with the difficulty level that the demo is set to use, but I just wanted to give folks a heads-up that, perhaps, not everything is "perfect".

Unfortunately, I haven't seen the demo pop up on Marketplace yet, but when I notice that it has been posted (assuming that it will be eventually), I'm sure I'll post that information here on the site.

[Moptop]

The demo is the first level in the campaign mode, is it not? Perhaps this poor AI is only representative of the earlier stages in the game. I recall Culdcept PS2 being similar, with the final matches featuring much smarter AI.

If this were not the case, however, I don't think it will impair my enjoyment of the game much. Most of my time will be spent playing against humans, either online or locally.

[thesideburns]

So I just bought OXM (for freakin $10!) and the culdcept demo seems to be freezing my xbox. As in it never gets past the demo disc's generic loading screen.

Not. Happy. At all.

EDIT: After about 20 minutes of trying different stuff (including cleaning the disc, even though it looked spotless), the demo finally loaded, but only if I didn't sign in to any gamer profile.

Has anyone else with the demo experienced a slight framerate hitches in the game? I'm getting hitches when scrolling over various territories with the pointer, and battles also seem to be slower than the PS2.

To people with the full japanese version: the complete game has a consistent framerate, right?

To anyone contemplating buying OXM for the demo - It was $10, which I didn't realize until after I paid for it (got it at the grocery store). I don't know that it was really worth $10, but it does have local multiplayer, up to 4 players, with 4 pre-built sample decks to try.

Personally I'd suggest satisfying your SAGA thirst with YouTube, and put $15 towards Puzzle Quest on XBLA instead. It'd be an infinitely better use of the money. I can't imagine a Culdcept player who wouldn't like Puzzle Quest.

[Moptop]

I second that Puzzle Quest statement, as I'm addicted it myself..

[wraith]

The demo's okay. It sounds great and Culdcept in HD is just beautiful.

It is a little jerky/stuttery as I've seen others mention. Dialog takes a half second to load, cards take a half second to load, scrolling over territories can take a while to load...it really adds up and the jittery jerkyness almost makes me want to go back to the PS2 version. Almost.

Gameplay is solid though. I haven't seen the computer make any bonehead moves. Gameplay should be great if they can fix the hiccups/framerate problems.

[Moptop]

I recall hearing about framerate issues in the Japanese version of the game as well, but I was under the impression that they were fixed. It would be a shame if the same optimization effort wasn't made for the retail release of the North American version. I wouldn't mind waiting for a patch, but I would have thought it unnecessary after all of these delays.

How could a game like Culdcept even have framerate issues in the first place? It can't really be the graphics, so it must be poor memory usage and caching..

[Moptop]

I FINALLY got my hands on the demo, and I'm rather pleased with it. The stuttering was a little unnerving at first, but I stopped noticing it after the first 10 minutes or so. The colours were beautiful and vibrant, the new art was gorgeous in most cases, and the localization is VERY professional. I also found myself enjoying the music, which is great, because I'll be hearing a lot of it.

Regarding the AI, the computer performed well against me, even besting me in my first game. Though, that may have been a result of not having a creature for the first four turns.

Overall, I'm impressed. If the minor stuttering issue can be resolved, I think it would be a perfect follow-up to the PS2 game.