Cladun: This Is An RPG "Official Thread"

The Yugo said:

Is this PSN only, or is there a disc release?

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Magician said:

Bump

I finally sat down and put a few hours into Cladun this week. Initial impressions are...overwhelming, borderline shock. Are all Nippon Ichi games this bonkers with depth? After the entertaining intro I am thrust into one hell of a crazy rpg system. If I didn't have the action/rpg experience that I have I'd probably be lost.

Okay, lets see. You start with two characters Soma and Pudding. Like most rpgs you earn experience to level up and gold to purchase goods from the shop. As you complete floors more floors are unlocked to explore. You can save anytime out of the dungeon.

The gameplay and atmosphere is akin to Gauntlet, where you control one character and dungeon-crawl for money and loot. But the levels (thus far) are smaller and have fewer enemies. Sometimes you're required to kill a boss to exit a level, sometimes you're not. You play one level at a time, after you complete a level you're taken back outside to the town where you can equip your character with the latest drops.

Now here's the tricky part, the main rpg system for Cladun, the magic circle. The idea is, the stronger your friends are, the stronger you are. You control one character while the rest of your team can be used as sub-characters. The magic circle consists of a grid around your lead character; two spots to the front, back, left side, and right side of whichever character you're using.

Not all of these spots are open at first, early on only two spots in the back may be open, or one to either side. Each class has its own variation of magic circles, with more unlocking as that particular character levels up. Story-specific characters cannot change classes, while your custom-built character can change class at any time. There're six classes (dragoon, warrior, merchant, etc), each with different strengths and weaknesses.

Each character has a certain amount of mana; once a sub-character is inserted into your lead character's magic circle that sub-character's amount of mana determines what artifacts you can use. Artifacts are like any sloting bonuses within the action/rpg genre, they give particular boosts (more damage, more accuracy, higher crit rate, more SP for special attack, etc). These artifacts can be swapped in and out of the magic circle anytime, no penalty, no charge.

Once in a dungeon your magic circle acts as a...defensive lifeforce. If you take damage from the front the sub-character you have in the front slot of your magic circle takes the damage. Once a sub-character takes enough damage to be knocked out you lose his defensive lifeforce and any artifacts he/she had equipped. Once all of your sub-characters are knocked out you're left with the lead character life; once the lead character's life is gone, game over.

Since you control one lead character at a time equipment is shared, meaning you have one palette for every charcter. That way when you change your lead character you won't be have to keep tabs on mulitple pieces of equipment. Equipment is only required on the lead character because all sub-characters are there in "spirit" not in body. Because of this you can only change characters outside of a dungeon.

That's a quick view on just the main game mechanic, nevermind Cladun's soundtrack, art direction, characters, story or gameplay. I'm sure there some nuances to this system that I haven't even noticed yet. I thought I was getting into something nice and simple, something that you can just pick up, play and put down again just a quickly. No no, Cladun is as crazy-deep as any srpg, only it's an arpg.

Crazy man, crazy good that is.

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megashock_330 said:

ooo, want this

does teh game hold up after like 20-30+ hrs tho??

im like 15 hrs into zhp and im alredy bored

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