Part of the Guild01 collection and available on the eShop only; when I bought it a couple of days ago, it was half the price on the US shop (around 8 USD).
Crimson Shroud opens up with a brief story sequence of limited interaction, introducing the location and two characters. The game itself is told as a flashback of the opening sequence, and the whole setup is that you are a pen and paper RPG player facing a game master. Game characters (including enemies) are represented by static miniatures (they have a base as well) and animations are limited to spinning, rattling and leaning of the whole model; it might sound cheap at first but the miniatures themselves are well modeled and it fits rather well with the overall tone of the game: rules are explained by the game master in first person and each location is introduced by a small description which feels right out a D&D (or Pathfinder) session. And of course there's die rolling.
Changing location is done by simply pointing where you want to go on the touch screen and once arrived, the game master tells you if anything happens. The map for the current location depicts several rooms and corridors, but only a few can be visited; in those which can, the game master will tell if there are actions available. There are few clues on what to do and even in the first dungeon, you have to exit a room and re-enter to trigger the event that will let you proceed, which is kinda annoying; this problem is not present in all dungeons but sometimes you'd wish that the level design wasn't that strict.
Battles are fought in turns between the three main characters and a maximum of three enemies at once, though fallen enemies can be replaced by their comrades.
Each character (including enemies) has two actions per turn: attack, magic or use item, and skill. Ditching one of the two or skipping a turn altogether will make the following turn come faster. Die rolling at first come into play only when certain skills are triggered (like Meditate, that replenishes MPs; or degenerative magic that requires to overcome the target's resistance), but later die can be added to a large number of actions to increase their effectivness. Die used that way are gone forever, but the stock can be replenished by comboing elemental attacks.
Spells and skills have an elemental attribute (water, fire, earth, thunder, wind, light, dark) and linking three of them together will give you a 1d4; two 1d6, three 1d8, etc etc, up to six for 1d20. Comboing is not done by using the same element but by using different, not-incompatible (light can't follow dark, for example) elements at least once at each turn; the thing is that comboing takes in account enemy action, so a wonderful five elements combo can be broken by an enemy not using an elemental skill for that turn. Luckily the dice is awarded the requirements for the combo are met, so nothing is really wasted. The amount of die you can carry around is limited, so it's not wise to stockpile them, especially if they all are 1d4s.
There is no movement during battles, though special conditions can prompt an ambush or ranged battles; in both cases, the battle opens up with a die roll that tells how many turns the ambushed party loses or how many turns melee attacks are less effective due to the distance between the two fronts or one of the sides has an advantage in size.
During ambushes the turns lost are straightfoward in their usefulness, but in ranged battles, the reduced melee effectivness can be a double edged sword.
Your party is always composed by a melee fighter (Giaque, your character), an archer (Lippi) and a mage (Frea), meaning that only 1/3 or the party will suffer a meanigful penality; however this penality also applies to the opposing party and Giaque is the character with the highest and most constant damage.
MPs for skills and spells are built up by attacking enemies (Frea can use a skill to immediately gain them though), so it's not possible to spam special actions, a thing that also influences the combo system.
At the end of each battle you get barter points to loot the corpses and die gained through comboing can be swapped for extra barter points. Barter points are awarded based on your performance (though I don't really know what the evaluation parameters are) and looting is particularly important as magic and skills come from the equipment and not from the character. Characters do not advance in level and can learn only one innate skill, so managing the equipped gear is paramount. It's possible to fuse together two identical pieces of equipment to get a better one or fuse them with a spellbook to give that piece of equipment a maximum of two spells.
The battle system is complex and the game throws all the mechanics in place during the first dungeon, and this can be quite overwhelming at first; however everything falls into place easily after a couple of battles and there's enough depth to keep the whole thing going.
Though the system might work well, mstering it unveils the game's bigges problem: the user interface.
First, the interface seems thought for a 3DS XL: the lower screen is particularly busy, with a lot of small icons with little to no spacing, and numbers for stats; they are readable and easily interacted with on a normal 3DS, but the feeling is that Crimson Shroud was thought for a larger screen and then shrunk down to a 3DS and the interface split between the two screens. As gear is the driving aspect of character progression, equipment stats should be clearly visible and easily understandeable: they can be understood pretty easily and each piece of equipment will show bonuses or maluses associated with it, but the whole list must be scrolled down several times to be fully read: this can be done with Y and the control pad or by click on the tiniest arrows I've seen on a DS or 3DS game: item spells are listed at the very bottom of the list so it's necessary to scroll down the list or you'll go into battle without a skill or magic that could be vital to the party.
Fusing equipment is not extremely clear as well, as lost skill/magics are somewhat hidden in the screen layout; there's a lot of scrolling and menu shuffling involved with almost every task, but not enough to make the game irritating. Let's say if you're used to Rollmaster, you'll be at home.
Menu design is clunky as well, as all menus are strictly for one purpose; there's also no quick way to get change between menus without getting to the topmost level. But even with such compartisation, the menu structure is not irritating: it could have been better, sure, but it's not a game breaker.
The game can be controlled completely via the touch screen or via d-pad/buttons and shifting between the two is effortless and, using some features of both methods increases interface user-friendliness.
So far, I'm liking it a lot, and found it more pleasant than Liberation Maiden from the same collection.
Crimson Shroud opens up with a brief story sequence of limited interaction, introducing the location and two characters. The game itself is told as a flashback of the opening sequence, and the whole setup is that you are a pen and paper RPG player facing a game master. Game characters (including enemies) are represented by static miniatures (they have a base as well) and animations are limited to spinning, rattling and leaning of the whole model; it might sound cheap at first but the miniatures themselves are well modeled and it fits rather well with the overall tone of the game: rules are explained by the game master in first person and each location is introduced by a small description which feels right out a D&D (or Pathfinder) session. And of course there's die rolling.
Changing location is done by simply pointing where you want to go on the touch screen and once arrived, the game master tells you if anything happens. The map for the current location depicts several rooms and corridors, but only a few can be visited; in those which can, the game master will tell if there are actions available. There are few clues on what to do and even in the first dungeon, you have to exit a room and re-enter to trigger the event that will let you proceed, which is kinda annoying; this problem is not present in all dungeons but sometimes you'd wish that the level design wasn't that strict.
Battles are fought in turns between the three main characters and a maximum of three enemies at once, though fallen enemies can be replaced by their comrades.
Each character (including enemies) has two actions per turn: attack, magic or use item, and skill. Ditching one of the two or skipping a turn altogether will make the following turn come faster. Die rolling at first come into play only when certain skills are triggered (like Meditate, that replenishes MPs; or degenerative magic that requires to overcome the target's resistance), but later die can be added to a large number of actions to increase their effectivness. Die used that way are gone forever, but the stock can be replenished by comboing elemental attacks.
Spells and skills have an elemental attribute (water, fire, earth, thunder, wind, light, dark) and linking three of them together will give you a 1d4; two 1d6, three 1d8, etc etc, up to six for 1d20. Comboing is not done by using the same element but by using different, not-incompatible (light can't follow dark, for example) elements at least once at each turn; the thing is that comboing takes in account enemy action, so a wonderful five elements combo can be broken by an enemy not using an elemental skill for that turn. Luckily the dice is awarded the requirements for the combo are met, so nothing is really wasted. The amount of die you can carry around is limited, so it's not wise to stockpile them, especially if they all are 1d4s.
There is no movement during battles, though special conditions can prompt an ambush or ranged battles; in both cases, the battle opens up with a die roll that tells how many turns the ambushed party loses or how many turns melee attacks are less effective due to the distance between the two fronts or one of the sides has an advantage in size.
During ambushes the turns lost are straightfoward in their usefulness, but in ranged battles, the reduced melee effectivness can be a double edged sword.
Your party is always composed by a melee fighter (Giaque, your character), an archer (Lippi) and a mage (Frea), meaning that only 1/3 or the party will suffer a meanigful penality; however this penality also applies to the opposing party and Giaque is the character with the highest and most constant damage.
MPs for skills and spells are built up by attacking enemies (Frea can use a skill to immediately gain them though), so it's not possible to spam special actions, a thing that also influences the combo system.
At the end of each battle you get barter points to loot the corpses and die gained through comboing can be swapped for extra barter points. Barter points are awarded based on your performance (though I don't really know what the evaluation parameters are) and looting is particularly important as magic and skills come from the equipment and not from the character. Characters do not advance in level and can learn only one innate skill, so managing the equipped gear is paramount. It's possible to fuse together two identical pieces of equipment to get a better one or fuse them with a spellbook to give that piece of equipment a maximum of two spells.
The battle system is complex and the game throws all the mechanics in place during the first dungeon, and this can be quite overwhelming at first; however everything falls into place easily after a couple of battles and there's enough depth to keep the whole thing going.
Though the system might work well, mstering it unveils the game's bigges problem: the user interface.
First, the interface seems thought for a 3DS XL: the lower screen is particularly busy, with a lot of small icons with little to no spacing, and numbers for stats; they are readable and easily interacted with on a normal 3DS, but the feeling is that Crimson Shroud was thought for a larger screen and then shrunk down to a 3DS and the interface split between the two screens. As gear is the driving aspect of character progression, equipment stats should be clearly visible and easily understandeable: they can be understood pretty easily and each piece of equipment will show bonuses or maluses associated with it, but the whole list must be scrolled down several times to be fully read: this can be done with Y and the control pad or by click on the tiniest arrows I've seen on a DS or 3DS game: item spells are listed at the very bottom of the list so it's necessary to scroll down the list or you'll go into battle without a skill or magic that could be vital to the party.
Fusing equipment is not extremely clear as well, as lost skill/magics are somewhat hidden in the screen layout; there's a lot of scrolling and menu shuffling involved with almost every task, but not enough to make the game irritating. Let's say if you're used to Rollmaster, you'll be at home.
Menu design is clunky as well, as all menus are strictly for one purpose; there's also no quick way to get change between menus without getting to the topmost level. But even with such compartisation, the menu structure is not irritating: it could have been better, sure, but it's not a game breaker.
The game can be controlled completely via the touch screen or via d-pad/buttons and shifting between the two is effortless and, using some features of both methods increases interface user-friendliness.
So far, I'm liking it a lot, and found it more pleasant than Liberation Maiden from the same collection.
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