The Game: Players make their way around a board of colored squares that they may claim as land when landed on. You can then use you accumulated magic points to summon monsters from your hand of cards to place on the space and "guard: it. This monster essentially becomes the landlord for that particular space, card battling adversaries' monsters when they land there. If your monster wins you collect a magic point fee from your enemy. If they win, your monster is destroyed and the opponent steals your land.

But, monsters aren't the only cards you have in your arsenal. You can also equip weapons, armor and magical items and spells to help your card battles along. The fee that must be paid when losing enemies pass through your lands can be made larger by raising the levels of your land. The game ends when one player reaches the required number of accumulated magic points for that level. The battles are connected together by a storyline that, while interesting, definitely takes a back seat to the gameplay.

The Good: The gameplay and rules are fairly easy to grasp and after three or four battles you'll have the hang of it, although card battlers will probably have a bit of an easier time of it. It's a simple enough game to learn, but if you dig a little deeper and are willing to do some learning and memorizing there is a lot of deep strategy to be found in the game as well.

The card art is quite nice and each artist is credited for their work when you look at the actual card details. The selection of cards is quite hefty (470 cards in total) and I'm hoping that more will be made available as DLC. Creating, rearranging and sprucing up your decks can be almost as fun as fighting the battles themselves.

Once you have the hang of how it all works, you can go online and battle against friends over LIVE adding yet more depth of play. Battling against a human brain is always much trickier than fighting computer AI, especially in games where choices and strategy are concerned.

At $40 it's a nice budget title that won't leave your wallet wondering what the hell happened and is sure to give you many hours of card battling goodness.

The Bad: The good parts of Culdcept Saga far out weigh the bad but there area few bothersome things that won't escape notice. The load times are pretty long for a "now-gen" game and the battles themselves are a little long for my taste. Each full board takes about 40 - 50 minutes to play through and if you're doing the single player mode where you do battle after battle it starts to feel a bit extended. Something around 30 minutes might have been a little bit more reasonable.

I also would have liked to have seen a little bit more from the character customization. While it doesn't have a terrible lot of bearing on the gameplay or story, some more choices besides two skin colors and six hairstyles would have made battling other people online a bit more interesting. As it stands everyone looks more or less the same however I should say that you can gather pieces of armor and weapons from winning battles that you can then mix and match on your character giving them a little bit more personal character.

My only other gripe is the actual card battles themselves. I was really looking forward to some kickass Eye of Judgment style 3D monster battles and instead we get to watch the two cards sit side by side while swords and other items make slashes across the cards themselves. A little disappointing, but certainly not a huge deal.

The Final Round Up: Culdcept Saga is a terrifically engaging and addicting game. If you are are a card battle enthusiast, there will be plenty here for you to love. It's also a great game to start with if you are looking to get into the card battle genre and the mix of board game elements makes it easy to understand. A few minor gripes aside, Culdcept Saga is a great addition to the card battle genre.

The Verdict: If you are on the fence about delving into card battling and are unsure about the genre, Culdcept Saga is something you might want to TRY BEFORE YOU BUY. However, if you are a fan of the genre, this is a standout title and my recommendation is to definitely BUY IT!