Cladun x2 Pc review (steam version)

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Cladun x2 video review by comicconreviews: http://www.youtube.com/user/comicconreviews
Transcript of video:
Cladun X2 is a game about grinding, and I mean serious grinding! The plot is this for your sins you've been trapped in Arcanus Cella a miniature world where you must fight in endless dungeons, you'll come across other characters who are stuck there too.
This game isn't about plot it's about endless customization. You have a selection of classes to pick for your main character, warrior, wizard, Saint, Guardian, Ranger, Merchant, and Swordmage. And these classes all have different abilities, magic, and job skills. Not to mention different stats. Then you pick the general look of character and personality trait. The personality traits don't have a huge effect on the game, their more for fun, they influence conversations. You'll also be able to further edit you characters appearance, and even the look of items as much as you want from the games menu at any time. 
The dungeons is what the game is entirely focused toward. You might be suprised to find that the dungeons, and with practise you can even finish some of the earlier ones in 30 seconds. But this is a big plus about the game. The formula goes a little something like this. You beat a few dungeons gain experience for you and your party, find items, gold. And use these to help you progress so you can do it all over again with harder dungeons you unlock as you beat the old ones. 
The music in the dungeons, I feel tempted to say is maybe the best I've ever heard in an rpg with the possible exception of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, although there seems to be more variety in this games music. Nothing makes you feel more like an adventure than this soundtrack. 
The monsters all have a lot of retro charm just like everything else in the game. You have frogs that will jump about and attack you with their long tongue, knights are impervious to damage from the front, spiders that shoot web at you and slow you down. Giant boars that have attack patterns where they will run at you. nimble archers that shoot arrows. Cats that have a deadly claw attack, and some wierd things I can't even describe.
In the time you're not fighting in dungeons, you'll soon be able to access all the other world locations either by navigating around the tiny island of Arcanus Cella or simpling selecting the location from your menu. 
Their are different weapons types in the game: Swords allow to you to have 2 quick attacks with a third slower more poweful attack, by pressing the attack button 3 times in a row. Daggers allow for a lot of repeated quick attacks but have very little range. Blunt weapons like axes and clubs allow for a powerful slow attack but you can't defend yourself with a shield when using them. Spears attacks are similar to swords but slower, with longer range, and are more tricky to hit with. Bows are very useful as they allow you to spam attacks with less chance of getting hit, but they little range. And staffs allow magic attacks which take a while between attacks to recharge, but can have elemental based effects certain enemies will be weaker against which reminded me a lot of something like Pokemon.
You can use the shop to buy new weapons, shields, armour, and artifacts. But we'll talk more about artifacts in a minute. You can find plenty of weapons in the dungeons, but you'll have the option to buy some in the shop too. You'll find yourself contantly using different weapons as you switch between different characters with different classes, and job skills. For instance for my main character the comiccon who is a sword mage, I find particuly good with Swords, the Spear, and the Bow. Which are all the swordmages abilities.
But this game has a party system, you can create as many characters of any character class you want at any time from the menu. Their usefullness and the size of your party is determined by which magic circle you use. And as with everything else, that is determined by how many dungeons you've beaten. The key here is constant progression and changing of tactics.
Magic Circles are perhaps the most important game mechanic. They allow you to constantly change up you're parties stats, and focus on different strategies. For instance. You place the relevant artifcacts you find in dungeons onto the relevant spot on the magic circle. For instance Defense artifcacts go on defense spots, attack artifacts go on attack spots. As you beat more dungeons you'll gain access to more magic circles. The best thing you can do, is to change up your characters every few dungeons, and change the magic circles and equipment. You only ever fight as one character, but you can swap your main character to be anyone from your party. The Magic circle is a great game mechanic, that will have you obsessively looking for the best strategies throughout the game, and it adds a lot of variation too.
In dungeons, you'll come across bosses. This is the second one. It's a giant tree, like any boss it has a lot of poweful attacks and will kill you in seconds if you don't come up with some tactics first. I guarentee you, you'll want to come back for more punishement you get. For instance my tactic was to use to use the fire magic attack a few time before my SP ran out, to atttack him with the spear, uses my flame weapon magic, and of course to stay mobile. Boss battles are often over quickly, just like the dungeons themselves, so quick reflexes, and a lot of skiddings to avoid hits is your best chance to give yourself a half second to think about the best move. 
But wait you'll very soon unlock the option to have even more grinding on top of your regular dungeons. With something called a rangeon. A randomly created dungeon with 99 floor. There are two types of rangeon Neogon and Trigeon. A trigeon basically being 3 neogeons. So if you think you're good, think again trigeons are brutal, and with this many floors would take you a very long time to beat compared to the regular dungeons.
To progress to the next floor inside a trigeon or neogeon you'll come across gates. These include Angel Gates, and Devil Gates. And they can change at any time, so if you chose a devil gate, then you might be lucky and it will turn into an angel gate randomly! 
The gates determine the monster level, item drop rate, and rare title rate. Which is a big reason to fight in neogeons and Trigeons in the first place to find some decent titles for your equiptment. 
Having breezed through several dungeons by having a carefully managed party, I thought I should take on a trigeon. Yeah...you may not want to get cocky in a game like this you're going to end up having your ass handed to you on a silver plater. Which just makes you want to come back for more punishment even more, so you can beat it. At certain point you'll have more cutscenes for the story. And sometimes these conversations can be pretty funny. It is a bit of shame that you don't get to see more of these. As the conversations are different depending on your personality, a few lines of dialogue between my narcissitc main character the comicicon and the others in the game where pretty damn funny, but the focus is on grinding as I said at the start of this review so don't expect many of these moments. All in all I had a lot of fun with this game, and enjoyed grinding more than I have in a very long time. And if thats what you're after this game has in spades, set to charming retro graphics, and a truly beautiful soundtrack that had me almost brings a tear to your eye (cartoon angry overlay text: TOTALLY MANLY TEARS!). And it's biggest appeal might also be in biggest flaw, in that it's a gigantic grin-fest, if you're after more you wont really find it. If not this is probably your dream role playing game!
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