Crimson Alliance was developed by Certain Affinity and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released on September 7, 2011. The game is a free download, but characters must be purchased. One character costs 800 MSP, while all three can be purchased for 1200 MSP. A copy of the game was provided for review purposes.
Isometric cameras come with a whole myriad of expectations and memories for many gamers. Most jump straight to Gauntlet, the quintessential isometric beat stuff up game. Well Crimson Alliance is no Gauntlet. Granted, those enjoying the first minutes of their virgin voyage into this game will call blasphemy, but by the end of the first level the differences will be very clear. Crimson Alliance can, however, play like Gauntlet if allowed to, but it would take a lot of effort to ignore the awesome aspects of Crimson Alliance that make it such a different game.
Crimson Alliance has a slight flair for the retro in that it is very, very much about score. There is a story, and there are characters, but the real meat is in the mechanics; Crimson Alliance thrives on good gameplay. The game has three classes, Direwolf the Wizard, Moonshade the Assassin, and Gnox the Mercenary. Each class has its role, especially when it comes to co-op, but each has its offensive and defensive capabilities, none of them rely on each other necessarily, though they can assist each other. Each class’s ability to deal with the decent variety of enemies in Crimson Alliance varies greatly, so the game will play very differently based on which class is being used, and which skills of the class are being focused on. While it’s an action-RPG, Crimson Alliance isn’t so RPG-heavy, the stats are simple and easy to manage as they’re based off of the equipment and there aren’t too many permutations of skills. It’s easy to jump into, it’s easy to understand, but mastery is a different story. Living through a level of Crimson Alliance is pretty easy for the most part, but the multiplier mechanic used to get awesome scores is what really sends this game above and beyond. Every kill, every combo, every streak adds to the multiplier, but one hit, just one, will send the multiplier down one whole notch (it maxes out at 8). That whole mechanic is what Crimson Alliance hinges on and is why people that love to top leaderboards will be all over this game.
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