Crimson Shroud

Overview

Crimson Shroud is the last part of the Guild 01 collection to be released in the US. The game is centered around Giauque, a "Chaser." Chasers are people that make a profession out of hunting down gods, deities, and other figures and elements of power. The enemies of the game consist of typical RPG tradition with Goblins, Dragons, and Lich. It was designed by Yasumi Matsuno with music by Hitoshi Sakimoto and his Basiscape team.

Story

The world of Crimson Shroud takes place where magic was discovered during the Dark Ages when war broke out. This finding dramatically changed how people lived their lives. To use magic, you need a gift for magic. One type of gift lets you use one kind of magic, but there are some exceptions to this rule. Adventurers and researchers near and far have set out in search of such a relic that bestows "The Original Gift" to who controls it, which is said to be inside the Sun-Gilt Palace of the Rahab, the country that Crimson Shroud takes place in. Giauque and his band of Chasers decide to set out and recover this item before anyone else can.

Gameplay

Exploration within Crimson Shroud is handled with a simple point-and-touch mechanic that transports your party between different rooms within a large area. This is similar to exploration mechanics found in Ace Attorney games and Persona 3 Portable (when outside of Tartarus), where there is no direct control over the movement of your protagonist(s).

When entering a room, the game presents the player with exposition through prose narration--all dialogue and activity appear as they would in a novel. Occasionally events appear that require you to roll Dungeons and Dragons-style dice to determine success or failure on your part, such as dodging an arrow. At other times, rooms contain treasure chests to loot. There are also sequences where dice rolls dictate what happens next. Considering the outcome of of the dice roll, certain events or actions will be locked out completely. And of course, some rooms contain enemy encounters. Non-boss battles can be revisited by leaving and re-entering any room in which such a battle occurs.

Dice rolls also factor into battles themselves, where some skills or spells need a roll to hit, and others can be augmented (either hit rate, damage, or both) by using consumable dice that you accumulate in your inventory. Similar to standard rules, the games uses 20-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 4-sided, and 10-sided die to calculate totals in combat and other equations.

The combat system allows for avoidable encounters represented in the overview map as enemy miniatures and can be ambushed. Being that the main characters and enemies are miniatures, there is almost no model animation in combat and only really consists of the minis shifting back and forth to let the player know which one they have selected.

Combat mechanics play out similar to standard turn-based JRPG fare with a few twists accompanying the aforementioned dice rolls. Each character--enemy and ally alike--may execute up to two actions per turn: Attacking / Spellcasting / Item usage vs. Skill usage. As some skills are special attacks, it's possible to damage an enemy twice in a turn or damage two enemies in one turn. In addition, many spells and skills map to a certain elemental affinity. Crimson Shroud employs the typical circular relationship of elemental affinities. Each time an enemy or character casts a spell or executes a skill with an affinity, the game remembers the affinity, allowing them to build up a chain combo. Each time the combo builds past 3 chains, the party is granted one of the aforementioned consumable 4-, 6-, 8- or 10-sided dice. The chain is broken when actions of two opposing affinities (as per the circular relationship) are executed, or when the same affinity is used twice.

Characters

Giauque is the main character, and a melee weapons user.

Frea is a girl from the Qish Tribe, with a strong magical gift.

Lippi, Giauque's constant friend, is a Master bowman. He can pierce a butterflies wing at one hundred paces. His gift allows him to "see scents," and as such, is continually relied upon to locate enemies.