I’m old enough to remember what life was like before the internet, cellphones, and tablets. Growing up in the early ’90s, we didn’t have access to the internet, so my family would play board games to make our leisure time fun.
Some of the board games I loved playing as a kid were Snakes and Ladders, Guess Who?, Connect 4, and several others. It wasn’t until 1997 that my family bought a PSOne, and my focus shifted to video games instead.
When it comes to other types of offline games, I was always terrible at card games. I remember my best friend loving Yu-Gi-Oh! at the time, but I wasn’t able to afford the cards and was too lazy to read the rules of the game.
The only reason I am bringing up board games and trading card games is that there’s a new video game out called Culdcept Begins. The series actually started back in 1997, although this is the first time I have heard of the series. Culdcept Begins is designed to bring veterans back into the fold, but it is also an entry point for newcomers like me to enter the franchise for the very first time.
The goal of the game is to get the most Magic Points possible. The total you have to earn in each game changes, but this could mean earning 8000 Magic Points or more before your opponent does. You can earn Magic Points in a lot of different ways, both by travelling around the game board or by battling opponents in spontaneous card games. Either way, strategy is the key to winning because you will lose a lot if you don’t plan your moves carefully!
The standard game board is a square with 25 squares for you to land on. Each side of the board is represented by a different colour. There’s blue, green, yellow, and red. You will get bonuses if you place a card with the same colour as the one on the game board.
Each player owns a book that has specific cards. Most of the cards in your deck are monster cards, and you place monsters onto the game board to gain territory. The corners of the game board are filled with castles and forts, and you can gain extra Magic Points by simply landing on these locations.
To begin moving in the game, you have to roll a die. For example, I can roll a four and land on the blue territory. In order to claim that blue square as my own, I will summon a blue card from my deck to occupy it.
If my opponent also rolls a four after me, they will land on my territory and will have to fight me using their own deck of cards. When both opponents land on the same square, the monsters in your deck will now have to fight to the death!
Card battles in this game are thankfully not complicated because they will have a health bar and an attack power meter. Your goal is to simply have enough attack power to kill a monster in one hit. I can have an attack power of 60, while my opponent could have only 40 health points.
If my opponent loses a card battle, they will have to forgo their own magic points and give it to me. The person who occupies the most land and has the best monster cards is usually the player who will win in the long run.
Aside from monsters, there are other special cards in your deck that can improve the stats of your monster. For example, you can earn cards that can increase your attack power so the opponent can die in one hit. On the flip side of this, you can also earn armour so your monster’s health bar is higher than before.
There are other special abilities that you can earn while going around the game board, such as rolling two dice, or even attacking an opponent from any location using a magic bolt. Despite being a person who usually sucks at card games, I understood most of Culdcept Begins ‘ mechanics and enjoyed what it offers.
The cool thing about Culdcept Begins is that it even has a story mode for you to go through. While there is no voice acting, the game has a lot of dialogue and interesting characters for you to meet. The story mode is essential to play through if you plan on unlocking more maps and cards.
If you just want to play through the board game stuff itself, you can just choose the Matches option in the main menu. You’re free to play against the AI, or check your skills against the many players who play the game online.
While there aren’t too many negative things I can say about Culdcept Begins, the one part of the game that might annoy some people is that matches can take a long time to complete. Finishing a match with 8000 total points to earn can last anywhere between 25 and 40 minutes.
You can thankfully choose to change the speed of the game by fast-forwarding segments of the match if you want things to go by quicker. Still, you still need to have a lot of patience if you plan on completing the game’s story mode.
If you don’t like board games or trading card games, then Culdcept Begins may not be for you. However, if you want to try something different, you should give this game a go. It’s easy to learn, but hard to master.
