Crimson Shroud
Review
2026-03-21
Crimson Shroud is a really hot guy. So hot with his beautiful tabletop-diorama art-style, the way he tells you "You don't level up, you only get stronger through equippable gear." You let out a breathy sigh, "He's so different from the other JRPGs!" But when you finally have sex you're really just concentrating on those sexy tabletop miniatures because if you truly think about it, the actual act is kind of a letdown. Every drawn out 10 minute turn-based encounter is the same as the last. And half the time you don't even get any gear at the end. Talk about not getting your needs met. You wake up the next morning and realize you're dating a fucking idiot. Sure, he's hot and he says all the right things but he sucks. And you hate him.
And the thing is, when you start out the game hums along. You're exploring the dungeon, uncovering the plot, listening to Hitoshi Sakimoto's bangin' FFXII-ass battle theme. The writing captures the narration of a dungeon adventure perfectly -- not just the evocative descriptions of dilapidated ruins -- "You squint against the sunlight spilling in through cracks in the ceiling dome" -- but the actual voice of an experienced adventurer who knows death is always one mistake away, describing a room you've just entered, hinting at danger with a dramatic pause. Not once do you need to stop to grind because the gear being dropped is always sufficient to squeak on by encounter after encounter. You notice the little figurines emblazoned with Level-5 on the bottom. You appreciate the grotty, interesting world. You think: this is the stuff.
But Crimson Shroud is one of those games that has a bunch of great-sounding ideas on paper that absolutely explosive diarrheas the mattress in execution.
Let's roll actual dice to determine hit rolls or to add bonuses! Cool! Until you realize it just adds dice rolling animations to the already drawn-out combat and usually gives you such minuscule benefits you stop using them entirely[1]. Or the idea that there is no leveling up, you just get stronger by finding better gear. Cool! Only the actual way to get stronger is to combine gear so you get a +1, +2, all the way up to a +9. That both invalidates the joy of finding new drops off bosses -- they'll always be worse than some trash you've mashed together into a +5 -- and means you have to grind the same drops over and over. Only the loot tables mean every enemy drops enough different items that getting the same drop twice takes battle after battle after battle. Ten minute battles. With no interesting mechanics.
And at some point you need a random drop from a specific enemy to progress the story and so you grind. And then you hit the Witch Kings fight and you need to grind drops to be strong enough not to get wiped on turn one. And then you go through NG+ to get the true ending and there are three more points you have to grind for random drops to progress. It is like pulling teeth. It is like pulling teeth and then shoving them back into the wrong sockets. And spraying RAID on them. While listening to the FFXII soundtrack.
In a perfect world you play Crimson Shroud just long enough to soak up all its superficial beauty. But I have a mental disorder that means I must finish games when I start them and finishing Crimson Shroud only highlights the utterly flawed design of the whole thing. Crimson Shroud is a hot guy. And like some hot guys sometimes it's best to go the one-night-stand route and say ta-ta.
- The dice rolling might be the most "Wow they really didn't think this through" aspect of the game. You can accrue dice through the course of play which you can then either add to your hit damage or chance to hit percent. Hit damage is straightforward: you add a d4, you roll the d4, it lands on a 2, you add 2 damage. Hit percent is more fucky. One time I had a hit chance of 85%. I added a d4, which the game said raised my chance to 89%. Great. The game then rolls the d4 and says I need a 2 or higher to hit. That means I actually have a 75% chance to hit. So by adding a die the game said my hit chance went up by 4% but it actually went down by 10%. HUH? Did y'all play this game???