Gameplay, Graphics and Sound

KUF: Circle of Doom is not a direct successor to the previous titles in the series.  That probably explains a few things.  I’m not sure why this was billed as an RPG because it’s more of an action adventure title to be honest.  I suppose anything in which you level up and have dialogue within the game is considered an RPG.  There are 6 characters you can choose to play across 6 acts.  Leinhart, Celine, Kendal, Regnier, Duane, and Curian.  Each of them have their own unique style.  You have only 3 attributes to worry about between them all in Health Points, Skill Points and Luck.  HP determines quite obviously how much damage you can take before death.  SP controls your attacks and how often you can wield them.  Luck is your good fortune that affects the quality of item drops you receive and your Synthesis success.

You speak to a variety of Idols at Idol Sanctuaries throughout the game to learn of your path and story.  Once you encounter the Idol you can either Trade/Sell inventory, Synthesize Inventory or Sleep to learn new abilities.  Synthesis is when you combine equipment to make better equipment.  You can take a sword and Sythesize an ability into it making it a more powerful weapon.  That alone you could spend hours trying to master the perfect sythesis.  The Sleep sequences in the Dream World were always fun to me for some reason.  The graphics were better and I got to hear Leinhart speak in his silly vampiric voice.

Circle of Doom reminded me of Ninety Nine Nights only it was much, much better than N3.  The hacking and slashing was fun and the combinations during the hacking were even better.  The combat though was pretty point blank and none of it too challenging.  This wouldn’t normally be much fun but because of all the cool weapons and enhancements you have at your disposal, it was.  Even without any proper targeting it was fun.  There are melee and ranged weapons galore throughout the game that allow you to lay your vengeance in a variety of ways.  There are potions, abilities and all the stuff that makes these types of games interesting.

The abilities you have to learn but I didn’t bother much and that’s probably because learning the ability was somewhat of a pain.  Each ability that you learn (novice, intermediate or advanced) has to be assigned via the Dream World and they have a list of tasks you must complete which consisted of killing a certain number and type of enemy.  This sounds simple but at times you were left having to back track in order to complete the menu of enemies and that led to plenty of wasted time and energy.  I needed to kill 2 Chandeliers for one ability and I never even ran into any to kill.

All of your weapons, potions and abilities are equipped by holding the RB button to go into the Status/Inventory menu.  You can carry a hefty number of items to either sythensize at some point or sell off to the Idols.  You can get a better description of the many items you’ll come across as well in the menu.

The enemies were both cheesy and massive.  There were cute little scorpions and huge molten beasts that you had to deal with but there still remained only one strategy to successfully get you past any of them.  Press X and press A…a lot.  And at times hit the B button or Right Trigger to unleash an ability.  I did notice a bit of frame rate stuttering when there were a considerable number of enemies on screen.  And I also wanted to make mention of the ridiculous camera angles when facing the bosses at the end of regions.  At times you couldn’t see what you were doing and there was no way to adjust it so you were left running around or slashing hoping not to get dead.

Allow me to point out, however, that there are different modes in the game in which the way you play will change.  In the more difficult modes you’ll find that you can’t just press X and A and expect victory.  Synthesizing and abilities play a larger part as you increase the difficulty.  And the enemies are more difficult to deal with as well.

Visually, the game was sometimes beautiful and other times just okay.  Like I mentioned above, they were much better in the Dream World than they were during the game and its combat.  The environments, although supposedly destructible, were not.  I will say that the world was a very comfortable size and some of the regions were beautiful.  I loved the lava cave as well as the European palace.  Each environment was a character in itself and you seemingly walked for miles to explore them all. 

I loved the music in the game when trouble approached.  This isn’t a stealth game so you can’t sneak up on anyone.  When you hear the drums start, you know there’s trouble ahead.  (or sometimes not if you’re surrounded by those Invisibles)  Invisible enemies are the reason you need a Pendant of Detection, one of the many magic items in the game.

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