PixlBit

I’ve never been more impressed by a title screen. Picture this: it’s a peaceful, moonlit night in 8-bit land. The pixelated moonlight is reflecting off of a pixelated island. There’s a catchy Japanese song playing (the one used in the official trailer). This one scene tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the game. It shows that NIS really understands its core fans and has put a lot of effort into making the game exactly what they want it to be.

But you know what? It’s all downhill from there. ClaDun isn’t a bad game, not at all, but it has a way of setting your expectations very high then failing to live up to its own hype. It advertises itself as something more than what it really is: a very detailed dungeon crawler. The dialogue and characters have almost no role beyond the first half hour, but it seems like they are going to be important and witty throughout, which is the disappointing part. The comedic element is also mostly ignored past this point. It’s a great dungeon crawler, but that’s all it is.

Take the character creation screen. On top of the helpful little stat comparisons and descriptions of the types of abilities each class learns, you can actually select each character’s personality! Wow, that’s inventive—so you mean I can make my character a badass Warrior who’s, like, a rebellious outlaw type? And whenever they talk to NPCs and my party, they’re going to be all mean and humorously confrontational? Nope. This choice does NOTHING. Why would you even let me set a character’s personality if it doesn’t affect anything? It’s not as though my characters talk to each other, or anyone else for that matter. All this option does is get my hopes up! It’s a pretty big oversight not to follow through on such a thing.

Why am I making such a big deal of this? Because if anyone were to play a short demo of this game, say one that lets you go through the first one or two sets of dungeons, their perception of the game would be completely skewed. It’s deceptive. Character interactions are a key element in any remotely RPGish game, and if you’re going to leave them out you had better make that perfectly clear. I’m not sure whether this was intentionally misleading or just lazy, but either way, the game sets you up for disappointment right from the title screen.

Anyway. There’s a lot of merit to this game, too. The stuff it did focus on turned out great.

The game starts off by dropping you into the world of Arcanus Cella. Supposedly it’s a big, wide world, but you only get to see one town and its portal to a wide variety of dungeons. One of the town’s inhabitants suggests you venture into the monster-infested dungeon for no apparent reason. This is a comical nod to old-school games which typically didn’t even give you that much explanation. Maybe there is a justification for it or maybe there isn’t, but don’t worry about that right now, you need to get busy killing things.

The bulk of ClaDun is spent in the dungeons that give it its name (“ClaDun” is a portmanteau of Classic and Dungeon). This is an Action RPG, meaning the combat happens in real-time. You run around, you stab monsters, you collect their pocket change. Sometimes you hit switches and sometimes they open doors. The dungeons are pretty well-designed and it’s even fun to go back and redo them several times, which is never necessary, but beating maps quickly enough unlocks good stuff. It might look like an 8-bit game, but it controls like something much more sophisticated. There are buttons for attack, run, defend, and slide; you can jump, do a quick aerial attack, then pull yourself back while still in the air to get out of the enemy’s range. These smooth controls are important ‘cause the game’s hard enough as it is.

The bonus dungeons are even harder than the main quest. Ran-geons are 99-floor dungeons. Tri-geons are three ran-geons in a row. Yes, that’s a single dungeon with 297 floors. And the monsters get stronger with every floor. There is no shortage of difficulty here, even for the most masochistic players. Fortunately, there’s a chance each floor will have stairs that lead back to town, making the marathon fun for people like me who don’t want to spend that much time in a dungeon at once.

ClaDun’s main innovative gameplay element is the Magic Circle. You pick one main character and play as only them when you enter dungeons. Other characters can be placed in slots on the main character’s Magic Circle to act as HP shields. But they don’t contribute any other stats—instead, you can attach artifacts to their slot in the circle to boost the main character’s stats, or the sub character’s own HP. Each sub character also has their own Mana count (not “MP,” which is called SP in this game) which determines how many artifacts can be attached. Sound complicated? It’s not, really.

At first I found it annoying that, say, putting a Warrior sub character in a Warrior main character’s magic circle doesn’t give the main character super strength, but once you get used to it, it’s actually a really interesting system. There are spots with extra effects based on the particular magic circle, like double Mana (letting you place better artifacts) or boosts to running speed when no character is placed in a spot. Your party can be as big as you want, but a circle could have between 2 and 8 sub character slots, so it’s not always a sacrifice to leave a spot empty.

ClaDun is also full of other customization. None of it particularly appealed to me since I was happy with the default setup, but it could easily be fun for those interested in fine-tuning the experience, and it doesn’t get in the way for everyone else. You can edit your characters’ sprites and the appearance of their weapons. The game even has a built-in background music creator. Admittedly it has a poor interface, but the fact that there’s the option to create your own music in-game is pretty cool. There’s also the Titles system, which allows you to extract useful effects from items you find and attach them to items you want to keep. My only complaint about all the customizable features is that there are so many of them; I feel like I’m missing out by not making use of such a big chunk of the game.

For the most part this game is made for a niche audience, but there is one element that will appeal to everyone: the soundtrack. I recommend setting the music to Real as opposed to Retro—the 8-bit instrumentals get old after a while. And you’d be missing out on all the xylophone and saxophone music. The music surprised me with its variety, but it never contradicts the mood. The only downside with the music is that there are too few tracks.

If you enjoy ploughing through monsters for hours on end, collecting ever-stronger loot and tweaking your character and equipment setups, this game is for you. If you’re looking for an involved storyline, moving, emotional moments, or... characters, then you’re looking in the wrong place. This game is about dungeon crawling and it’s really good for that, but don’t go into it expecting something more. It’s tricky to say whether or not this game is overpriced. There are lots of great features, but only hardcore fans will use them. On the other hand, the dungeons alone will still keep you busy for a while. If you have $20 to spend, I say pick it up; if you have only $20 to spend, you can probably find something more worthwhile.