Is the Xbox 360 now the undisputed leader in J &W Console RPGs?

[Gnizmo]

mrstickball said:

zexen_lowe said:

That's why I posted it was debatable. And I haven't played Folklore, so I can't judge it. But there is no way to think of Culdcept as an RPG. Call it board game, call it turn based strategy, call it card collecting. But don't call it RPG. Folklore certainly has way more RPG elements than Culdcept

Hmm. Quite a few people call Culdcept Saga an RPG. It's on a few RPG sites, and if you google "Culdcept Saga RPG" it returns around 125,000 websites that label it an RPG. And I don't understand: What's not RPG about Culdcept Saga? Every monster has HP and SP. You can level them up in certain attribute-effecting ways, gold, turn based, and so forth. Yes, it's a board game too, but so is D&D.

 

 Culdcept lacks a lot of the qualities normally used to define an RPG. It is easier to call Zelda an RPG than it is to call Culdcept one.

 First off, the story is detrimental to the game. The game works a thousand times better if you simply remove all the dialogue and just play the game. There is nothing compelling or engrossing about it. You don't even meet any interesting side characters to spruce things up. You just get terrible dialogue and shitty excuses to suddenly fight with cards. The entire story concept was essentially stolen from Yugioh.

 Secondly, there is no way to level up your monsters. None at all. Certain ones have special abilities that increase this stat or the other occasionally, but those are temporary effects 99% of the time. You can level up a land, but the land and creature are only incidentally related. If I have a level 5 land, I can easily swap whatever creature is on it for another one with no penalty. It remains a level 5 land (with all the bonuses that come with that) with a new creature on top.

 Thirdly, there is nothing that is close to equivalent to EXP. Nothing that is even remotely similar to it in fact. The mechanic is entirely absent from the game. 

 There are a number of other smaller issues like the almost complete lack of equipment, shops, etc but I am too lazy to go into all that. I will sum it up by saying the game is a cross between Magic: the Gathering and Monopoly. Download the demo and play it and you will understand why the game is not a RPG. The demo will show you almost exactly what the rest of the game will be like. All you are missing is deck construction which does nothing to make it feel more RPGish.