I downloaded Cladun on my PSP Go and have been putting a lot of time into it. The going was slow at first because I couldn't get used to the combat. It felt unwieldy and clumsy, and the monsters were hitting me too frequently, preventing me from having any opportunities to stop defending for an instant so I could attack. I stuck with it and eventually realized I couldn't play the game at Diablo's pace, so I slowed my roll and got methodical for each monster, taking them on one at a time. Once I slowed down and took the time to employ deliberate strategy for each obstacle, I began to like the game a lot more. There is a lot of nuance to the combat that can be confused for jankiness upon first getting thrown into the game. The closest thing I can compare it to is Demon's Souls, as it requires careful attention to offense and defense, sizing up the monsters and traps on a case-by-case basis. It also takes a page from Demon's Souls its concepts of risk and reward. The levels aren't nearly as time-consuming as an entire level in Demon's Souls, but dying in a dungeon makes you lose all your loot you picked up previously in that dungeon, as well as subjecting you to a penalty to your exp and money.
The tone of the game could not be more different than Demon's Souls. It has a beautiful pixel-art style with eye-popping colors and a stylized design. The music can be toggled to "real" and "retro" which allows you to choose between what sounds like NES recordings of jaunty tunes and real acoustic renditions of jaunty tunes that remind me of tavern songs from World of Warcraft. Some people will like the ultra-tongue-in-cheek humor in the game. It's a little too self-aware and mad lib nerd humor for my tastes, but I'm sure there are people that will love it. It's pretty much 3D Dot Game Heroes. Thankfully, the dialogue and story in the game is mercifully brief, non-essential, and easily-skippable, making it quite easy to run dungeon after dungeon after dungeon after dungeon and get addicted like I am.
Character customization is extremely robust, allowing you to use your sub-characters as elements of your main's talent-tree thing, and then customize each portion with artifacts and modifiers to allow your characters to play exactly how you want them to. Main characters, classes, and talents can be switched at any time if you aren't currently in a dungeon, allowing you to take the right force into an especially difficult section. You can also create your own characters to your heart's content with the easy-to-use editing tools. You can start from a template or just got nuts. Characters level up differently as mains or subs, which encourages you to switch around your party and try an endless variety of styles.
I'm really happy I stuck with it. The dungeon sizes are perfect for playing on the go and it scratches an old-school rpg itch that hasn't been scratched since I stopped playing Demon's Souls. Highly, highly recommended.
Cladun: This is an RPG!
Game » consists of 2 releases. First released on Sep 21, 2010
Cladun, short for "Classic Dungeon", is a retro-twinged sprite-based dungeon crawler for the PSP, developed by Nippon Ichi. Cladun features the ability to swap between regular and "8-bit" styles (both in graphics and music), and has ad hoc co-op multiplayer.
Impressions
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