Co-operative games seem to be in short supply, especially those in the RPG genre. So when I heard about Crimson Alliance and its 4 player co-op, I became quite excited as it brought back memories of Gauntlet on the Nintendo 64 where we would run through levels, slay some enemies and collect as much loot as possible. I was curious if Crimson Alliance for the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) could capture that excitement and much to my surprise, it did.
The story in Crimson Alliance is standard fantasy fare. A princess seduces a Mage and teaches him dark magic. The dark magic is used to consume people souls and forming her cult. She then locks the Mage in an eternal hell for centuries, only for him to break free and look for revenge. You take the role of one of three characters: the melee based mercenary Gnox, the speedy assassin Moonshade, and the ranged mage Direwolf. The group makes their way to the ruined city of Byzan and attempt to save the city and stop the cult of the Soul Siren. The story is told through a motion comic style, with some nice voiceovers every couple of levels. The story is enough to push the game forward but I didn’t really find myself that invested into it.
What did keep my interest was the engaging and challenging combat. The controls are very simple with 4 moves tied to the 4 face buttons, right trigger to block, left trigger to pick up objects to throw, right bumper to use a consumable and left bumper to unleash you ultimate power. Each characters 4 moves have their own specific style and use, but they generally break down to A is a dash, B is a stun move, X is you basic attack and Y for a character specific attack. Each of these 4 moves can be powered up based on the equipment you find and equip.
The thing that makes Crimson Alliance combat unique and intense is for each level you can earn a score to receive a medal rank at the end. With each enemy that you kill you can build up a multiplier up to x8, but with each single hit you receive your multiplayer goes down by one. I found it impossible to get a gold medal score without being perfect in combat, which can make for some intense combat encounters trying to take down a group of enemies while avoiding being swarmed or hit by a ranged unit. It is even more frantic in multiplayer where the multiplier is combined but if anyone takes a single hit the multiplier goes down.
Speaking of multiplayer, this is where the game really shines. Playing with a buddy online or offline is a blast. You and up to three friends can work your way through the levels together. I found it odd there were only 3 classes for a 4-player co-op, but if D&D has taught me anything it’s that an extra wizard never hurts. Ninja looting is also not a problem in multiplayer since gold is shared evenly and whenever you find an item chest the game spawns one for each character.
Items are also an interesting feature of the game. Instead of levels and skill points, each character has 3 equipment slots where you can store specific items like staves, swords, shields and armour. Each piece of equipment gives a stat boost to one of the three attack moves or health. With each stat point, the damage and effectiveness of you combat moves increases, there are stat milestones where the move get a significant upgrade, making it faster or have a larger area of effect. Changing what weapons are equipped is also really simple. Pushing the back buttons opens a small menu in the corner that lets you see what items you have and how it will affect your stats and able to equip it all without pausing the game, and anyone who has played co-op RPGs can tell you how annoying it is to have that person who pauses every 5 minutes to compare the item they just picked up to what they have equipped.
While the item system is nice and simple, I found myself wishing that I could spend stat points as I wanted, as I never seemed to get the right stat combination with the items I had.
Visually the game is really good. The levels are really detailed and there is cool stuff going on in the background that makes the world seem bigger than just the level you are playing. I didn’t notice any frame rate issues or slowdowns. Even with tons of enemies and exploding barrels flying all over the place, no issues were noticed.
The sounds in the game are nothing mind blowing. The sound effect work is decent and the drumbeat sounds during some of the bigger fights sound decent as well. Otherwise most the game it is really quiet with no background music. Although I never really found that an issue since my friends and I were too busy shouting about someone “accidentally’ throwing explosive barrels in at party members. It was me, and it wasn’t an accident…
The game has 11 main campaign missions and a handful of arena missions. The game took me 13 hours to finish. For re-playability, the levels are not randomly generated, so after playing through a couple of times you can remember the layout. But there are still hidden items like soul shards, which unlock some really cool backstory information, and heart containers. There is also the difficult challenge of earning a gold medals and collecting gold to purchase the really powerful item, not to mention 3 distinct character classes, so there is definitely some extended play time if you’re interested.
Overall, Crimson Alliance is an enjoyable ride whether it with friends or alone. While the solo player experience is decent the game really shines when playing with friends online. The combat is fast and fun, and even though I wish the “leveling up” was a bit deeper, it does work well and makes it easier for a casual player, or new player to the genre, to jump in and play. If you looking for a co-op action game to play with your buddies you can’t go wrong with Crimson Alliance on XBLA.
