Culdcept II Is Back Online!

It’s very rare that I announce two games coming back online within the span of a week but yet here we are. Ladies and gentlemen, Culdcept II is now playable online again thanks to the great Shuouma! Not only that, but Shu has almost fully translated the game into English! He does want to be completely transparent with the fact that this was an AI-assisted translation however, so it’s not perfect and it’s not 100%. But regardless, it makes the game much more playable for non-Japanese speakers. I’m sure not everyone is as hardcore as me, having played through the game’s entire campaign in Japanese, so this will surely boost the player count that would likely otherwise be sparse.

If you’re unfamiliar with Culdcept, in its very basic form, it’s essentially a mix of Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering. You throw dice and travel around a board and claim empty lots by placing monsters on them. Players that land on occupied lots will either have to pay a fee to the owner or battle the monster for a chance to gain control of the land. The game consists of many different cards which you can put together into books which will determine the cards you can use in the game. There are monster, weapon, item, tool, and spell cards, which all play a role in the game. It’s a fairly easy game to learn but it’s very deep as well, so it takes a good amount of time to learn good strategies.

When it comes to the online portion, you can jump online with up to three other players and play just as you would in an offline multiplayer match. It works extremely well and has no noticeable lag or hiccups, as you would probably expect from a turn-based game. While the game does technically support both the modem and broadband adapter, as of right now, it’s not possible to play online via the broadband adapter. This is because the game uses the DreamPi VPN network which wouldn’t work with the broadband adapter without some sort of go-between like a Raspberry Pi or a PC. It’s possible someone could cook up a solution for this at some point but for now it’s DreamPi only.

Being one of my favorite Dreamcast games of all time, I’m absolutely stoked to finally be able to play this Culdcept II online! While these types of games certainly aren’t for everyone, I can definitely see this becoming a very popular online game. Fingers crossed for some regular online matches! As always, a humongous thank you goes out to Shuouma for all his hard work. The Dreamcast online scene owes him a great debt!

If you’d like to jump online yourself, you’ll need a unique “Login ID” in your web browser settings as this will be used as your account name when playing online. If you still have your ID set to “dream”, you won’t be able to connect to the server. As always, be sure to check the Connection Guide for all the info you need on how to connect. You can grab the English translation of the game from the Downloads page, however you can still play online with your original disc as well.

If you have any issues with the server, feel free to report them in the comments below. A huge thank you as always to Shuouma for his continuing pursuit to bring us even more online games to enjoy!