Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God is a more simplistic take on the classic dungeon crawling formula, akin to the Mystery Dungeon series. Even with this simplicity, the game proved to be quite fun. However, the game does suffer from numerous, minor annoyances and a rather subpar story.
Pros:
Simple, but fun dungeon crawling. Sorcery Saga strips down the dungeon crawling formula to its very core, leaving just the elements one would expect from a dungeon crawler, but shaking it up just enough for it to stand apart from the crowd. For example, one of the major changes being that the player loses all experience when completing a dungeon. Upon entering the next dungeon, the player will start at level 1. This does sound annoying, but it actually was not all that bad considering that enemies scale with the player. What is annoying, however, is the fact that the player loses their entire inventory (aside from equipped items) upon death, but that can be considered a staple of the genre. Despite all of this though, the dungeon crawling was actually quite fun and I had a great time going through the different dungeons, acquiring loot, defeating bosses, etc. It is quite similar to how the older Mystery Dungeon games worked.
Great port. Ghostlight has done an excellent job with the porting work here, as they did with Omega Quintet several months ago. At the time, I did not realize how well-done the Omega Quintet port actually was and it was not until I played Dark Rose Valkyrie, another Compile Heart game ported to PC, that I realized. Dark Rose Valkyrie, despite being an Compile Heart game, was not ported by Ghostlight, instead being brought over by what I assume to be an in-house team at Compile Heart. I ran into many technical issues during my time with Dark Rose Valkyrie, struggling to get the game running at a constant framerate. However, with Sorcery Saga, I had no such issues, technical or otherwise. It really made me appreciate the quality of work done on the port, especially considering that Sorcery Saga was originally a Vita game.
Cons:
Subpar storyline. Normally I would not be one to complain about the storyline in a dungeon crawler like this, but Sorcery Saga’s story was just bad. The game kept trying to push its story elements through its use of visual novel scenes, but they simply lost their appeal very early on. Occasionally one of these scenes may be funny, but the vast majority are just not worth the time, prompting me to skim the text and even outright skip it at times. Compile Heart may not be the greatest at telling a decent story, but they have done good in the past. Unfortunately, Sorcery Saga’s story is not one of those.
Annoying equipment management. Sorcery Saga has several minor annoyances that should be noted. The first of which is related to equipping items. Doing so actually uses up a turn, so enemies and such are able to move a tile. I would normally not mind this behavior, but what was annoying about it was the fact that the game closes the inventory whenever an item is equipped. Now again, this would normally not be too much of a problem, but it is because of the way the game manages its equipment drops. When traversing the game’s dungeons, a number of “unknown” weapons and shields can be found, requiring the player to equip them in order to see their true stats and value. As such, the player will constantly be equipping items to see their true stats. Having the inventory close every time gets quite frustrating, especially when going through 5 or 6 weapons and/or shields at a time.
Frustrating sidekick movement. This is another annoying feature, but this time related to the game’s sidekick character, Kuu. This little guy would constantly be moving around, even if the player was not. For example, I would oftentimes swing my weapon in place, waiting for enemies to move closer to me, but during that time, Kuu would move towards the enemy and get attacked, sometimes getting himself killed in the process. Kuu also would move whenever I equipped an item (as doing so uses a turn), so if I wanted to throw an item at Kuu to level him up, I would have to reposition myself to face him before doing so. Considering that unknown equipment does not reveal itself until it is equipped, I was constantly repositioning myself when going through my inventory, determining what to keep and what to throw to Kuu.
For an Compile Heart game, Sorcery Saga is pretty good. The dungeon crawling may be simple, but it is quite fun, reminiscent of the older Mystery Dungeon games. It also helps that Ghostlight did an excellent job with the port. Even so, the game does suffer from some minor annoyances and a subpar story, but I recommend it regardless.
You can buy Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God on Steam here.
I was provided a free review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.
cublikefoot 