Review: Cladun X3 (Nintendo Switch)
Greetings, villain! It may sound weird, but get used to it; in Cladun X3 you are one of several villains recruited for some…let’s call it “fun and games.” Your new boss seems like a nice…jellyfish? I guess we’ll just roll with it.
Cladun X3 is another 16-bit dungeon crawler with some interesting mechanics. You get all the dungeon running, monster destroying, gold grabbing, level grinding goodness you would expect, but there is much more. The “more” part involves character setup and a thing called Magic Circle, and these will either make or break the game for you.
Before we get to that, let’s take a stroll through the sights and sounds.
The visuals are a mix of textures and colors rendered in mid-def, 16 bit pixels. For the nostalgic and retro lovers out there, it’s really nice. For those who prefer a smoother look to a game, this is still tolerable. There’s a good use of color and contrast with enough definition to easily tell what you’re looking at, unless the game wants to make it hard to notice a thing (like traps, go figure…). Before you start on your dungeon crawl, you have some decisions to make. You can choose your avatar from dozens of options; you can even choose how your avatar stands and waits (front, oblique, still, bouncy, etc.).
The audio is interesting. You can let the game run with the stock music plan, or you can select songs from a list. There is even a sound editor if you really want to get deep into the details.
Moving around in the game is fairly easy. You have your joystick for moving up, down, left, and right. You also get the obligatory jump button as well as a slide feature for when you feel a need to limbo under certain traps. Along with the myriad settings with which you can tinker, you can set how the joystick treats walk vs. run (you’ll be doing a lot of running). One thing you will notice quickly (even if it’s when your hit point has run to zero) is that when you are running, your defense statistic goes down. It may sound cruel, but it is actually realistic; your best defense is when you have a steady stance, so this is just another facet of the game to keep in mind.
Now for the big thing: Magic Circles. This is where the game will either confuse and frustrate you or suck you into its own brand of detailmania. This feature is how the game lets you create personal buffs, defenses, and shields. Oddly, one of the shields which can take damage before you take the hits comes in the form of another person. You can place a secondary character in your Circle to act as a source of mana and to take hit points for you.
As you and your secondary level up, you will get access to new Circles. Indeed, the first Magic Circle you can use is really a straight line, but we’ll let it slide. Different shapes of Magic Circle allow for different buffs and different mana paths. As you will have guessed, each layout has advantages. You will need to do some serious leveling to get access to the advanced Circles, and some more leveling to get all the options filled.
Another feature of the Magic Circle is that this is where you can equip your weapons, armor, and so on. There are plenty of features so you can fiddle with settings to your heart’s content.
Speaking of leveling up, this game has a significant amount of level-grinding to get the necessary experience, gold, and so on to make significant progress. The game starts easy enough, and the introductory dungeons are a good training ground.
Once you get through the first few dungeons (which are brief and limited in size), the game will open up new dungeons and features. This is where the exploration and settings mania really get going. It will still take plenty of dungeon grinding to level up to make serious progress; the weapon, armor, etc. improvements are small, and even the buffs from your Magic Circle are not the monster crushers you might want them to be. So, there is still plenty of challenge in getting through the advanced dungeons.
Cladun X3 provides a great variety of elements for the player to customize. Most of them will have an impact on gameplay, while some are just for fun. This isn’t a walk in the park, so you will need to consider your strategy. The game encourages a ”run the gauntlet” approach to getting to the exit for each dungeon (faster is better for points and prestige) but there are still hidden things to find. There are lots of interesting monsters and bad guys to defeat. There are quick-run dungeons and more story-based dungeons. There are friend-foes with split personalities, a slowly unfolding backstory, and all sorts of interesting characters with which you can interact.
The game packs plenty of detail management and replayability into a pleasantly whimsical world, but I wish there was an easier way to change the amount of detail and customization required to be successful.
