What would you do differently? Is there anything you would add or improve upon from the first game?

For me I would re-vamp the online to give a list of all active matches awaiting players and then give the option to narrow down the search to fit my criteria. It seems (at least to me) that it's too difficult to find matches other than using quick match.

I would also expand the card exchange feature to be available online and not limit the amount and type of cards you can trade. It shouldn't be restricted to trading just one of a card you don't already own. If I only have 1 land protection card and a friend of mine is sitting on 10, he should be able to trade me as many as he wishes.

Rewards from winning matches should come in the form of the total gold you collected during the match. This gold would then in turn be used to buy new cards from a card shop instead of the random card rewards we get from winning a match now. This would encourage people to not just play quick matches vs the CPU to farm for cards. It would also encourage people to play some of the smaller maps that they might have strayed away from since those maps don't give as big of a reward. The amount you get would depend soley on the goal you've set for the match and your performance during the match.

What are some things you guys would change?

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If you're on the far left or the far right of an argument, you know what you've done? You've gone too far.

I would make it region-free...

I would get rid of the broken E cards, have better online matchmaking (such as setting the default search/setup option to 2-4 players), allow people to upload decks and replays of matches for their friends to download and sound off on, add a permanent leaderboard and just generally do a better job of supporting the game after release. Region-free would be nice, but since they can't even get the netcode to work properly in North America-only matches, I won't hold my breath. Oh, and two people on the same console should be able to play online together, even if it's only in player or private matches to prevent leaderboard boosting. I was really hoping this would be a game I could play with a couple of my friends who are married to each other, but no dice.

Graphics. This is the 360, how come we don't have animated card battles? JUst the swinging weapons is poor.
Camera control allow oyu to swing the angle of the board and zoom around anytime with the bumpers/triggers and right analog stick

Better AI, not cheaper. It drives me nuts, I will own 6 squares, not own then 6 more squares and where do they land... right in the middle, or on my one weak territory. once i up to level 5, if that ever happens, you can bet they will never land on it. I however will every time. it's a curse of ai games with dice, but it shouldnt be. Also, AI lands on blue square and summons yellow ogre. then lands on yellow square and summons the blue ogre he didn't summon last time. i would rather they play with more strategy then just frustratingingly lucky rolls.

higher standard book count.

make more sense of the tokens or symbols or whatvere they are called. i have played quite a bit and have never used one or know what they do. (i got the game used with no instruction booklet if it was in there...)

overall more cards need ot be added

better story

You bring up some valid points. I like the idea of animated battles. For the record, you can hit "Y" and move the camera around. I don't know if that's good enough for what you're asking as far as camera control or not. And as far as symbols go, the easiest way I can explain it is like the stock market. All values start at 10. The more colored creatures and leveled lands in that area will increase the value of those symbols.

So here's a strategy: lets say you're using an all blue deck. Buy blue symbols early. After you've established a few lands with blue creatures and leveled them up. The symbols you bought for 10 might be worth 17 now. You can sell them for a higher amount. Buy low, sell high. I hope that makes sense. It's the best way I can think to explain it.

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If you're on the far left or the far right of an argument, you know what you've done? You've gone too far.

The color of the creatures has nothing to do with symbol value. It's based solely on land. Symbols (who's starting value varies for each map) increase in value as land is leveled up, but also as you form land chains. So if I form a chain of five blue lands, blue symbols will increase in value. Also, sometimes when you transform a land, it will affect symbol value as well. If you, for example, change all the land on map to one color, the symbol value for the other colors ends up in the single digits. (I don't think it ever can get lower than five.)

Depending on what other players are doing, symbols can also be worth holding. If you have the most of any particular type of symbol, you get 10 percent of the symbol's value as a lap bonus each time out. So if you have, say, 30 red symbols worth 40G each, you get an extra 120G each trip around the map.

There are also spell cards that affect symbol values. There are cards which can raise symbol values and cards which can lower them. As an example, if your opponent is putting a ton of money into symbols, you can hit him hard by activating a spell which lowers the value of all symbols by 30%.

Oh, I thought of two more things I'd change:

1. Make it so that you can edit books while in the online lobby. If I do a quick search and there are no games, I shouldn't have to create a room or back out to the main menu to edit books.

2. Play a sound and flash an alert when a person joins a match. Too many times I'll be editing books and someone will join my game, only for me to discover them 10 minutes later. I've been both the guy cluelessly editing books and the guy who enters the room and can't get the attention of the headsetless host.

I actually had no idea you could do that with Y. That may be just what I'm looking for. Thanks!

 I finally found the glossary/help section in the main menu. I always went straight into "load". Now that I am cretaign AI, and playing versus matches this game has gotten even more addicting. :/ But also I read up on symbols, also played my first match where you could actually buy symbols. I like it, and look forward to playing with it more.

 I wish the AI editing is better. I tried to set up a highly aggresive AI with a good book, but they still seem to just pass right on by stuff without claiming it. I may need ot turn down the mana emphasis.

 That leads to one mroe thing I'd like in a sequel. More intuitive menu system. Yeah, once oyu know it it's fine, but there's too much in and out and confirm and whatever.

 Oh and all the senseless AI chatter in story mode, and menus to just press A through. End of your turn should have 1 screen pop up with total value, symbols and magic.

 I would also like to see a mana bar a la a health bar in a fighting game in the upper left/right of the screen to show where mine and opponents mana is at.

I really do wish they would have set up the online format better and if they come out with a new one, I really hope they do. It could have even been a small monthly fee to play it online and I would have signed up.

The problem was it took forever to find other players and when you did alot would dis-connect once they started losing the match.

I loved this game and beat it a few months after it came out, getting almost everything you could in the game, but due to the lack of the online capabilities and the redundancy of just playing the computer, I sold the game.

If they come out with a sequel, I will definitly own it.

Did you play a lot of matches online? One of my favorite things about this game is that relatively few people disconnect when they're losing, compared to every other game I've played online.

I still play this several times a week. While it can be tough to find matches, it's easier if you put some work into building a friends list of folks. I've got about 75 people on my friends list. Probably 50 or more are Culdcept Saga players. I also maintain the CuldceptCentral and CeptersUnion friends-of-friends lists, you know, if you ever get back into it. People run weekly tourneys and leagues, as well.

Make the game Downloadable instead of disc only. A game like this does not do well in retail then disapears.

Deck counts should be 60 cards I think. Most CCG's are 60. And this seems so limiting. I would lower the cost of non-mana producing spells a bit., as well as possibly territory abilities. So many of them just aren't cost effective and so never get used.

 It would be cool if there were just an expansion to this game. Maybe a small story line to introduce some new cards, but a DL content pack with say 50 - 100 new cards. I'd take that instead of the (never gonna happen) sequel.

I bet there will be a sequel, but probably not until the next generation of consoles (if the developer's past trend continues). As poorly as Culdcept Saga has sold, it's outsold Culdcept on the PS2. That said, I'm fairly amazed that there are no plans currently to bring Culdcept DS over to the West. :-(

The one thing I'd want in a sequel is a map editor. This series already has amazing replay value, and a map editor would enhance it tenfold.

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 GoodForYourSoul wrote:

The one thing I'd want in a sequel is a map editor. This series already has amazing replay value, and a map editor would enhance it tenfold.

I LOVE this idea. User-generated content is blowing up right now, and this is the perfect way to introduce that to this game.

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If you're on the far left or the far right of an argument, you know what you've done? You've gone too far.

A Map Maker
Thats it, thats all I want so far.  Well, almost, I wish the battle controls felt more flexible. 

I'd also hope for more rule options like allowing more cards in hand at once, changing the number of cards drawn, End of turn discard, etc to make bigger faster games somehow.  I've only done some of the single player so this may not be important later but so far the pace of the gameplay feels a bit slow for my taste with to much regretful discarding.

I also support the posters view on the card shop approach sorta like phantom dust.  It just feels better like that and it would prolly make sitting through those long losing battles a bit easier to stomach.  To steal 1 more thing from phantom dust, the online only win/trade cards awarded based on online wins seemed like a good idea.