Culdcept Begins - Nintendo Switch Review

Culdcept Begins by developer and publisher Neos Corporation—Nintendo Switch review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes 

Culdcept Begins is an interesting mix of card game and board game. There’s a ton of strategic depth here, but through the story mode you get enough of a tutorial that it never feels too daunting. I’m very excited by this latest return to the series, though I acknowledge that Culdcept Begins isn’t going to be for everyone.

The last couple of Culdcept games I’ve played were Culdcept Revolt on 3DS back in 2017 (you can read that review here) and prior to that Culdcept Saga on the Xbox 360 way back in 2011 (feel free to dust off the cobwebs on that one here if you care to read about it). There’s even going to be a throwback to the past later this year when Culdcept The First (a remastered take on the 1997 Sega Saturn game) – so the series is getting some love after a lot of time off, which is great.

It’s a bit challenging to describe the Culdcept games. They’re sort of a mix of Monopoly with land collection, and Magic: The Gathering with deck building, and maybe even a bit of Pokemon-esque collecting and elemental advantages being sprinkled in. There’s a lot of layers here, and it is wrapped in a somewhat simple story that leans heavily into the tried and true trope of special young boy getting involved in something much bigger than himself. This helps serve as a tutorial and your best means of adding to your card collection, which does the job as intended. The protagonist, Kamur, and his adventures are okay, but it’s never really all that compelling a narrative in and of itself. Still, I do appreciate getting some narrative around the gameplay, and while it's not overly memorable, it was in no way offensive either.

Playing matches provides coins and cards, and it can be a bit of a lengthy grind to unlock more cards for your decks (referred to in-game as books), but it’s a satisfying progression loop. None of this would matter of course, if the gameplay itself wasn’t so addicting, but I’ve long been a big fan of the Culdcept gameplay loop. The aforementioned decks allow you to customize your style of play quite a bit, which is a lot of fun.

Turns are built around this sequence:

• Cast a spell from your hand of cards (if you have one or want to use them). This can be spells that give you an assured, specific dice role, damaging opposing creatures, drawing extra cards and more.


• Next you roll the dice, determining how many spaces you can move.


• You then progress across the board. Boards start pretty linear but more advanced ones have branching paths where you can decide which direction to move.


• You then (in Monopoly-like fashion) decide what to do when you are on said tile. Do you drop a monster on it (and tiles are represented by elemental affinities and if you play a creature of the same affinity they have better stats) if it is unoccupied? If it is occupied by an opponent’s creature do you pay the toll or fight that for control of that tile? If you do neither, you can upgrade a tile you own (sort of like adding houses in Monopoly). 

All of that and more can happen in a single turn, with an objective of moving about the board to build up your mana score to a predetermined goal and then reach the castle / finish line. 

The average player versus AI match seems to take about half of an hour. I definitely had a ‘one more game’ itch as I played, but I will say that it can be a pretty hefty time investment. There are some settings like movement and message speed that I recommend tweaking to be faster once you get comfortable with the flow of the game, as it shaves some time off of the matches. There’s multiplayer options in the non-story modes as well, and there’s certainly a lot of fun to be had there as this really brings out the board game atmosphere. But at the same time the computer opponents tend to make their moves more quickly and a gameplay session with four people can stretch much closer to an hour. More players equals more chaos.

The time investment and the many layers of gameplay are two of the reasons Culdcept Begins might not appeal to everyone. Another is the amount of random luck that goes into success or failure. Just like a tabletop game, the roll of the dice can often spell defeat or victory, regardless of the best laid plans and strategies. I’ve had successful matches where I was in the lead for nearly twenty minutes, only to have it all come undone because I landed on one of my opponent’s heavily built up squares that had a creature on it that I had no chance of defeating. The toll hit me so hard that I had to sell off over half of my properties in shame (again, shades of Monopoly here) as my opponent won the game two minutes later. Had the dice gods favored me with any other square on the board, I’d have won the match probably two to three rounds later. That kind of randomness is just part of board game life as far as I’m concerned, but I can see it irking some players as well who want well-defined strategy to win over anything else.

As for the presentation? Culdcept Begins is generally charming if a bit technically underwhelming. I already touched on the rather straightforward story, and it does its job as the tutorial. The visuals are bright and colorful, but not overly detailed. Character models and card art are somewhat simplistic, but I appreciate the ability to easily scroll through a few tabs of notes on each card with some description of how they work and a bit of flavor about the creatures. The boards themselves are rather basic as well. Everything is clear and easy to identify due to the colored / elemental nature of the tiles, but the backgrounds lean into simplicity as well. The music’s not going to make any of my Spotify gaming playlists, but it’s pleasant enough and fits the mood of the game well enough at the same time. The controls are fairly simple to pick up, even if the gameplay itself takes a bit of time to master. 

Culdcept Begins is an excellent strategy game, with board game and card collection mixed together into something quite addicting. I’m a little surprised it is only getting a PC and Switch / Switch 2 release, but maybe if it performs well enough we’ll see it on Xbox or PlayStation eventually. In the meantime, if you are patient enough to learn the game’s deep mechanics and forgive the sometimes extreme randomness of the gameplay, there is a lot to love here and I’m thrilled to see the Culdcept series back again.

Score: 8.25 / 10