Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God PC Review

I thought I was crazy for curry, but my own fondness for the food is nothing compared to the cast of Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God. Everyone in this roguelike (recently ported to the PC by Ghostlight) is absolutely obsessed with the stuff. Forget collecting crystals or slaying gods, Sorcery Saga follows a young girl on her quest to assemble the ultimate curry by venturing into dungeons for ingredients. This bite-sized RPG has plenty of charm, but the dungeon crawling Sorcery Saga serves up is a little watered-down. Unlike the crowd-pleasing wonder that is curry, it won’t be to everyone’s tastes.

First, some Compile context. The Madou Monogatari or “Sorcery Saga” games were a series of RPGs released by developer Compile in the 80s and 90s, although never overseas. These games were mostly simple dungeon crawlers as adventurer Arle and her companion Carbuncle travelled through mazes fighting odd enemies like these cute little slimes. Do the characters sound familiar? Madou Monogatari would eventually be spun off into the puzzle game series Puyo Puyo, with countless releases including Tetris crossovers and a recent return to its RPG roots. Despite winding up on all kinds of platforms, Madou Monogatari disappeared along with the original Compile once they went bankrupt in 2003. Some remnants of the company were absorbed by Idea Factory as Compile Heart and cursed to produce Neptunia games for all eternity.

So in short, Sorcery Saga is a successor to Compile’s old-school RPG series, but since Sega have the Puyo Puyo rights now, it stars a cast of legally distinct characters. The protagonist is Pupuru, a ditzy mage in training who finds a fluffy, gluttonous companion who is absolutely nothing like Puyo Puyo’s Carbuncle. There’s even a womanizing dark lord and blue-haired adventurer who says unintentionally perverted things, just like Puyo Puyo. The characters never get quite as strange as Puyo Puyo’s onion pixies and gay whales, but the wacky cast suit this offbeat RPG setting.

That’s not to say the characters are entirely likable, though. Some of the goofier gags work, but Sorcery Saga ocassionally falls afoul of some of the mean-spirited humour other Compile Heart games have. Characters like Gigadis tread a fine line between affably aggressive and downright creepy to the game’s underage heroine, which not everyone will find funny. Some of the art is excellent, as is the Japanese voicework, but the characters are less of a throwback to their roots than the kind of pandering that’s pervasive in many modern JRPGs. In a genre full of fashion disasters, Puni’s outfit is an absolute abomination.

But then it’s hard to take the story or characters seriously when the Sorcery Saga aims to be as silly as possible. This is an RPG where Pupuru’s quest is to protect the local curry store from an expanding empire of restaurants. With all kinds of mysterious mages and corrupt curry barons running around, there’s a bit more going on beneath the surface, but don’t expect a deep storyline or characters from Sorcery Saga. The plot works fine as a way of shuffling Pupuru between dungeons and there are some unlockable skits for those who want to see more of the characters.

Rather than styling itself on Compile’s own RPGs, Sorcery Saga is now a roguelike in the vein of Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon games. The usual roguelike rules apply: Pupuru starts off each dungeon at level one, and must scour each room for treasures and the stairs to the next floor. Of course, each floor is also populated by enemies that advance toward Pupuru one square at a time; getting the edge on them requires players to make use of all the items scattered around the dungeon. Resources are plentiful, with heaps of weapons to wield and throw, along with potions, magical scrolls and books that teach Pupuru new spells . Not all items are helpful, though: sometimes it takes some trial and error to figure out that new sword is actually cursed and that summon scroll is only going to summon more monsters.

It pays to be cautious, especially in a game where one wrong move could send you back to town without any of your loot. There are occasional rest floors with a teleporter back to town, so Pupuru can head home to stash any rare items. This poses a dilemma – with no way of knowing how deep the dungeon is, do you decide to press on and risk losing it all? It’s the easiest roguelike I’ve ever played so that wouldn’t be a bad idea! The penalty for failure is high, but falling in battle also opens up generous dungeons designed around grinding.

The overall difficulty level is low when compared to similar titles, but there are still some frustrations in Sorcery Saga. Pupuru is accompanied by Kuu in dungeons, who loves to wander off on his own. Kuu’s health bar is also his hunger, which drops as he takes damage and walks around. This means players need to be constantly feeding him items, not that there’s any way of knowing what’s good for him. Feeding Kuu the right items lets him level up and learn some new moves. These abilities can be useful, but it’s a chore to constantly go into menus to get the gear you need to toss to him. Some of Kuu’s abilities are definitely more helpful than others, so it’s also annoying that you never know what you’re going to get. For example, one ability lets him upgrade your gear by combining items together, which is not only incredibly helpful for later dungeons, but makes the whole item system more interesting. You can eventually upgrade equipment back at base, but this comes at a cost. Sure, random elements are a necessary part of roguelikes, but everything surrounding Kuu just makes dungeon crawling even more tedious.

If she has the right ingredients, Pupuru can also cook curry in dungeons for a boost to her stats and experience – a cute twist that helps clear all the otherwise-useless ingredients out of her inventory. The core dungeon crawling in Sorcery Saga works; Mystery Dungeon games have endured for so long because the basic formula is still fun. There are some frustrations to be had, but it’s still satisfying to see the end of a dungeon thanks to your own smart item use (and a little luck). That said, Sorcery Saga is far more sluggish than other similar titles, with the controls and systems making each dungeon take longer than they should. The dungeons get so lengthy that they mostly challenge players’ patience to see if you can stand the game long enough to get to the boss at the bottom. Sorcery Saga would be better suited to shorter, more challenging dungeons, although I suppose that would require designing more than a handful of locations.

What does help Sorcery Saga to stand out among other roguelikes is its wonderfully bizarre soundtrack. The game is almost structured like a musical, giving every character a vocal theme song that plays whenever they appear onscreen. These songs range from awful (Kuu’s theme) to awe-inspiring like Gigadis’s grammatically-incorrect tune about how great he is. The boss battle music is a highlight that made some frustrating fights more tolerable with stupidly sincere lyrics about a battle for curry. The spices will show the way! Of course, you’ll mostly be hearing the comparatively boring dungeon music instead.

This PC port performs fine for the most part. The game’s perspective made sense on the Vita’s smaller screen, but everything looks far too zoomed in on the PC, with parts like health bars taking up far more space than they need to. I’m not sure if was my PC or how the original game is, but I experienced many occasions where Pupuru would walk through dungeons excruciatingly slowly. This slow step-by-step movement turned one of the most sluggish subgenres into something absolutely excruciating.

Sorcery Saga is a short game, but nothing about it was compelling enough to sustain my interest for long. It’s fitting that the characters are all pinched from Puyo Puyo, since the story is presented like a puzzle game with short skits. Some bits are funny, but the overarching plot won’t draw you in. It could be argued that the story isn’t the focus of Sorcery Saga, but it fails as a roguelike, too. A good roguelike needs to be constantly challenging, but the simple enemies and lack of hidden traps resulted in few situations where I really needed to think about how to make the most of my items. Instead I was just worrying about what Kuu was doing. That said, there are no shortage of difficult roguelikes on the PC, so perhaps being far too easy actually works in Sorcery Saga’s favour. Sorcery Saga could have a niche, but as a game about curry it definitely needed a bit more spice.

Review copy provided by Ghostlight