The 3DS eShop is closing up next March so I’ve been looking for titles to pick up before they disappear for good. Crimson Shroud, an RPG designed by Yasumi Matsuno, the Ivalice guy, places pretty highly on those lists, and the pitch is pretty good: a short JRPG presented as if it’s a tabletop RPG with miniatures for the characters moving between little dioramas while you roll dice to determine success. The whole thing took me about eight hours to complete, tells a complete story with a compelling cast of character and a unique world. But overall my impression of it is still mixed.
Crimson Shroud is the kind of game I like to remember more than I like to play. There are a lot of big headaches that stop it from being fun to play. There are cutscenes and sections of prose that make up a strong story and the atmosphere, which is all very strong, but then they’ll be broken up by half hour sections stuck in brutal, repetitive combat, or poking at a dead end to try and find the way to progress. There are so many ideas that sound great, but are just stuffed into a game already bursting at the seams so that they’re an absolute headache. It all comes to a head in the last couple of boss fights when the difficulty overtook me and I spent two hours in absolute frustration. Multiple times difficult boss fights rewarded in powerful weapons, which did absolutely zero damage in the very next fight because of an elemental rock paper scissors system you had no way of anticipating. Overall it could have been a good deal simpler, and a fair bit easier and been every bit as memorable.
A few of the bits I really liked- some in execution, others only in theory
You have a shared resource of dice which you can commit to any attack or spell to roll for extra accuracy or damage
You earn dice by chaining together combos of elements, so sometimes you’re choosing between the best short term tactic (using super effective fire) or the best long term combo (using a wind buff)
There’s a nice layered mystery where you’re presented with the dangerous idea that this book contains heresy (it was the Devil, not God that gave people magic), and when you actually find the resolution to that it has a nice elaboration- not contradictory, but expanding the truth into something somehow more scandalous
The female lead Frea’s design looks great, even if it is the kind of horny anime design that somehow shows off a huge amount of skin despite wearing a lot of fabric. I like a mage in red, white & black!
Anyway, I’m glad I picked this up before it disappeared. A flawed gem, but a unique one.
Crimson Shroud is the kind of game I like to remember more than I like to play. There are a lot of big headaches that stop it from being fun to play. There are cutscenes and sections of prose that make up a strong story and the atmosphere, which is all very strong, but then they’ll be broken up by half hour sections stuck in brutal, repetitive combat, or poking at a dead end to try and find the way to progress. There are so many ideas that sound great, but are just stuffed into a game already bursting at the seams so that they’re an absolute headache. It all comes to a head in the last couple of boss fights when the difficulty overtook me and I spent two hours in absolute frustration. Multiple times difficult boss fights rewarded in powerful weapons, which did absolutely zero damage in the very next fight because of an elemental rock paper scissors system you had no way of anticipating. Overall it could have been a good deal simpler, and a fair bit easier and been every bit as memorable.
A few of the bits I really liked- some in execution, others only in theory
You have a shared resource of dice which you can commit to any attack or spell to roll for extra accuracy or damage
You earn dice by chaining together combos of elements, so sometimes you’re choosing between the best short term tactic (using super effective fire) or the best long term combo (using a wind buff)
There’s a nice layered mystery where you’re presented with the dangerous idea that this book contains heresy (it was the Devil, not God that gave people magic), and when you actually find the resolution to that it has a nice elaboration- not contradictory, but expanding the truth into something somehow more scandalous
The female lead Frea’s design looks great, even if it is the kind of horny anime design that somehow shows off a huge amount of skin despite wearing a lot of fabric. I like a mage in red, white & black!
Anyway, I’m glad I picked this up before it disappeared. A flawed gem, but a unique one.