Culdcept Saga is the latest entrant in the popular Magic-meets-Monopoly game franchise that had previous installments on the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast. Developed exclusively for the Xbox 360, this title is the first in the series to incorporate the advanced online matchmaking features of Xbox Live. A demo was made available to Xbox Live users on December 4th, 2007. The demo allows for a single game on a small game board.

Story

While the plot is purely peripheral to the gameplay, the game's story concerns a powerful queen and a young boy who must fight to bring peace to their land. The boy, a Cepter who can control magical cards, must defeat adversaries to free the land from tyranny.

Gameplay

As in Monopoly, players in Culdcept Saga roll dice and move around a game board, attempting to claim spaces and assess fees against other Cepters who land there. Unlike Monopoly, squares are claimed by summoning creatures to guard them, and players who land on them can opt to challenge this creature with one of their own rather than pay the toll. If successful, the challenger claims ownership of the square. The winner of the game is the first player to return to the starting location after amassing a sufficient quantity of magic/mana.

Cards

Creatures are summoned from customized decks ("books") of cards which players design ahead of time from an available pool of cards. Other cards in these decks bestow items to enhance creature abilities, or represent spells which can influence movement on the game board. Although there are nearly 500 different cards in total, players must earn many of these through skillful play and story mode progression before they can be used.

Strategy

Although the game relies somewhat heavily on luck, players do have a choice over what cards make up their decks, as well as when to play those cards. The squares in the game consist of different terrain or elemental types (e.g., fire, water, etc.), and the abilities of various creatures can be bolstered by deploying them on an appropriate square. Some more powerful creatures can only be summoned when a certain number of squares of a given terrain type are already controlled, so balance is required when designing a deck.

Players must also decide when to upgrade the squares which they currently control. Upgraded squares exact higher magic toll rates than non-upgraded squares when opponents land there.

New features

In addition to card and rule tweaks, Culdcept Saga supports online multiplayer play against up to three other players via Xbox Live, complete with leaderboards and rankings. Also new to the series is the ability to unlock various items with which to customize in-game avatars.

Other improvements include high resolution graphics, now rendered (at least partially) in 3D.