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Cladun X2 – Review

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image002 Cladunx2 is Now Available on the Playstation Network StoreTitle: Cladun x2
Published By: Nippon Ichi Software America (North America)
Based on: Cladun: This is an RPG
Console: Playstation Portable
Release Date: August 2011
Genre: Action RPG
Audio: No Dubbing
Subtitles: English
Region: This review was conducted on a North American PSN copy of this title.
Special Thanks: Special thanks goes to Nippon Ichi Software America for providing a sample of Cladun x2 for the purpose of this review.

With Disgaea 4 out of the way and Atelier Totori on the horizon, you may find yourself in the need of another NIS America title that is perhaps a bit more light hearted and doesn’t require as much strategy in opposition to make quick decisions to succeed in small but challenging levels. If this is you, then Cladun x2 might be the game just for you. Following on from the original Playstation Portable release of Cladun: This is an RPG, this 8-bit dungeon crawler takes everything you loved about the original game, and did nothing but improve upon it. If you are curious, read on and find out more about this rather unique dungeon crawling game.

Cladun X2 - Review 1

The storyline revolves around.. whatever character or characters you decide to make, with the ability to customize appearance, gender, name, class and so forth. So for the purpose of this review, I shall be referring to the main character as the Male Swordmage who goes by the name of Sam (Hey, it is not often a reviewer can bring himself into his own review eh?).  With only the message “You have been chosen”, Sam awakes in a dungeon within Arcanus Cella surrounded by monsters and a voice guiding him to safety. Upon escaping he meets other residents of the tiny island who have given up trying to escape. Either through sheer boredom or a desire to reach what I assume would have been the end boss to escape, Sam traverses through the dungeons which are accessible through a floating door, whilst having the island reveal more services to him as he completes them.

As you can tell, that is pretty much the main brunt of the storyline, however you do get little tidbits of storyline here and there which whilst this evidently wasn’t a game solely for the storyline, does not completely abandon it, and works well enough to complement the intended gameplay system. During the course of the game you can unlock characters and create your own customized party members which hold little value to the storyline, but good in terms of both gameplay and if you just want to see the game from the perspective of another character. In the end, you should not play the game for the storyline but enjoy the storyline for complementing the game.

Cladun X2 - Review 2

Onto perhaps one of the more unique elements to this game – the focus on the 8-bit graphic design that has the diversity and customization to set itself apart from the crowd. The levels whilst being small each have unique layouts with puzzles that may require a bit in terms of fast-acting thinking to survive, but at the same time are colourful and diverse in the sense of design and is what I would have expected of any game relying on design techniques such as these. The character designs depend on your personal preference and dedication to doing some pixel alteration if it is not to your liking. During character creation you are given a selection of 20 hairstyles (Male/Female Inclusive) which range from the normal hairstyles to more animeish ones such as Nekomimi or “Guy with Cape” style. Whilst you can freely alter hair colour for any of these, they are more leaning towards unique appearances, so if you want a character to look different from them, you either need pixel art skills or an manual on how to do so. For me personally, my artistic skills are at ‘0’, so Sam was stuck with one of the pre-created appearances. Enemy designs may not differ much at the beginning, but you should find there to be an adequate number of well designed monsters to fight against.

Cladun X2 - Review 3

Because this is a retro game, there was no dubbing included in this game, which is of little concern to me, however the music selection should please most gamers who pick this title up. One of the first options you are given upon starting the game is whether you want ‘Real’ music which consists of modern instruments or the ‘Retro’ music selection which is what you would expect from a game of this genre. The only difference is primarily the instruments and music style, so tune X will be the same in both Real and Retro selections. It is changable through the options menu, however I would personally go for the ‘Real’ music style, as I did find the ‘Retro’ style a tad too intense for my liking, but either way, the music diversity and use in this game is appropriate. Sound effects are your general array of clips from the woosh of your sword to that normal sound of when your character jumps. Also surprising, as I just found out this second – the game does have a lyrical song on the title screen, which is actually decent.

Cladun X2 - Review 4

Now to the most important element of this game, the Gameplay. Gamers who have previously played Cladun: This is an RPG or similar styled games such as the Zelda GameBoy games should be familiar with the basics of this system. As the screenshots above indicate, you control your character as a third person overhead controller and navigate them through levels that should not take more then a couple of minutes to complete despite crawling with many a monster and trap. Your gaming style heavily depends on your character class for obvious reasons, so whilst users of spears or swords can more then happily go up to their enemy and beat the crap out of their enemy, mages will obviously need to keep their distance as they are lacking in defense. With the diverse variety of character classes and weapons to select from, you will have many a chance to select what you would consider the ideal playing style. The game later on allows you to hone your skills and EXP with levels such as Random Dungeons and even harder trigeon and neogeon dungeons, but I can’t say I have had much experience with either of those to comment.

Cladun X2 - Review 5

Of course, this game is more then happy to exploit any weakness your character has – especially in the later levels where the difficulty and number of enemies increase. Therefore, the game provides you with the ability to equip  up to eight additional party members to help you in your quest. These characters can level up through their journey with you, their usefulness when it comes to offense individually is zero. Your loyal followers are what you may consider your “shields”. Staying true to the 8-bit game design, enemies can attack you from all four sides, so instead of losing your HP immediately from being attacked, the party members you assign to for that angle will take the damage, and essentially sacrifice themselves for you – at least until the end of the level. Of course, you may find yourself losing two party members from the save placement and then be killed despite having 6 other party members. To digress from that however, there is another benefit to this system. Party management comes under what they call the Magic Circle system. Through placing characters on specific circles on the grid (Pictured above), you are able to unlock bonus stat bonuses for either the main character or the individual party members. These can both be positive (Eg. +ATK, +DEF), negative (Eg. -60% HP) or custom artifact spaces which allow you to add your own personal stat boosts to the grid. As you progress, better Magic Circle grids can be unlocked which allow for better stats and more party members.

Cladun X2 - Review 6

In terms of customizability, many of the games Nippon Ichi Software America have released recently include something or somethings customizable, so some of the features may be same-old, but I think the inclusions are nice and add some extra complexity to the game. The most obvious inclusion is the ability to use an image editor to create custom character and weapon appearances, and despite not having much of an idea on these things – some people I know have claimed it to be a fiddly tool, quite possibly due to the limitations of the Playstation Portable console itself. Upon starting this game, you are warned that you need to have a party of characters you should switch around regularly with, so as I have discussed above, the game does offer both a creative and gimmicky custom character system, sure to give you a unique character every time. Whilst some things such as name and class are no doubt important, manner of speech and a relationship chart are just a few of the more unique systems included. One last example out of many others is the ability to create your own custom music through a letter system which whilst allowing your own signature track to appear and is pretty cool, you need lots of trial and error, alongside time and a stable head to in my opinion, produce anything stellar similar to the tracks included within the game.

Cladun X2 - Review 7

With a sizable collection of post-game content and a “main story” mode that should take you somewhere along the lines of a dozen hours, you will no doubt get your moneys worth out of this game – but of course it depends on the motivation and dedication you have on finishing this game. The difficulty increases frequently testing Sam in every dungeon he treked from the monsters that always seemed to know where his party members were not and just how to ram into him, causing a great deal of damage to him so those who are expecting something easy can think again. Personally however, I did enjoy my time playing this game even if it was hard to get into at first and did increase in difficulty fairly quickly. It is no doubt one of the best modern retro style games I have seen in a fair while, althrough still could have used some tweaking to give some of the features more purpose then aesthetic appeal. If you are a fan of retro games and are not picky about there being a storyline, you have very few excuses to not check this game out.

Final Score
Storyline:
B-
Design: 
A-
Music: B
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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