Game: ClaDun X2

Platform: PSP

Publisher: NIS

Developer: System Prisma

ESRB: N/A

Genre: Old school RPG

Players: 1

What's Hot: Interesting new classes and magic circles, incredible amount of customization, dungeon exploring is still fast and breezy

What's Not: Charming side characters mostly absent, co-op has been removed, new customization options not always adequately explained

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Review by: Brandon "Swordmage" Cackowski-Schnell

ClaDun: This is an RPG was one of my favorite games of 2010 and one of the best games released on the PSP. ClaDun X2 builds on the solid magic circle combat system and fast paced dungeon exploration but with the added benefit of an incredible amount of customzation. ClaDun X2 remains an excellent way to explore dungeons, kill beasties and acquire copious amounts of loot, even if it isn’t quite as charming.

The game returns you to Arcanus Cella, a mystical, floating, dungeon toting world. This time you arrive with no memory of your past and no adventurers willing to go dungeon crawling with you. Sure there are some side characters, but unlike in the first game where these side characters would join you in your travels, the side characters here take a little while to warm up to you and join your cause. It’s a shame because along with an unwillingness to slay giant toads, these side characters aren’t as charming, quirky or as fun to be with as the side characters in the original. In their stead you can create as many side characters as you wish, drawing from a collection of old and new classes. As you progress, more classes are unveiled complete with new magic circles and new strategies for exploring dungeons providing the game with a constant feeling of progression.

Choosing your party’s character classes and subsequent magic circles are just a small part of the customization available in the game. Everything from what your characters look like, the weapons they use, to combat animations can be tweaked to your liking. Even the music that plays while dungeon crawling can be created in the game should you ever tire of the excellent soundtrack. Along with the appearance of your characters, you can create relationship diagrams that link all of your characters together with labels such as “Comrade” and “Lover”. The diagrams are meaningless as far as gameplay goes, but it does allow you to craft the narrative of your party of adventurers, a welcome addition given that the game doesn’t do that for you.

Combat is largely unchanged—a good thing given how well it was originally implemented. Supporting party members are slotted into class specific magic circles with their mana and hit points used to not only shield the main character from damage but also fuel the use of stat increasing items and artifacts. The number of items and artifacts has also increased providing even more options within the same magic circle as to how to best use the sub-characters.

Once you have your circle set, it’s time to venture into a dungeon, whether it’s a newly unlocked dungeon or one of the randomly generated levels of the Rangeon or Tei-geon. Normal dungeons can be completed in a manner of minutes with all gold, experience and loot taken with you as you exit. Dying while in the dungeon is less charitable but still gives you have of the collected gold and experience making experimentation with different magic circles and sub-characters a good use of your time if only to see what doesn’t work. The Rangeons and Tri-geons are a challenge of a different sort as exits are widely spaced and taking the stairs down to the next level gives you a chance to raise or lower the level of the monsters, sometimes dramatically so, as well as the rate of finding rare weapons and rare titles. It’s the same system as in the first game but why mess with success?. The random nature of the progression combined with the fact that each change in rate builds on the last change makes every trip to these random dungeons a completely new experience.

Unfortunately, one of my complaints about the first game is present here too, namely the paucity of documentation. ClaDun is a very easy game to pick up and play, however the various systems are somewhat complicated to master which is made even more so by the addition of new options such as titles, weapon attributes that can be recycled from weapons, combined and placed on new weapons. Constantly switching to the in-game dictionary can help alleviate confusion but the entries aren’t as expansive as they should be given the amount of complexity and content present, not to mention having to constantly switch over when all you want to do is kill some monsters; it hampers the flow of the game.

Regardless of these nitpicks, ClaDun X2 delivers on NIS’s promise of providing twice as much stuff as in the original. Sure, co-op and quirky characters are a casualty of this strategy but the same pick up and play dungeon crawling, satisfying player tinkering, and an assortment of customization options make ClaDun X2 a reason to hold on to that PSP just a little bit longer.

Brandon Cackowski-Schnell is a regular contributor to GameShark and is the cohost of Jumping the Shark , GameShark.com's official podcast and co-founder of No High Scores.

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