The PlayStation Portable was an iconic homestead for niche RPGs, cementing the likes of Nippon Ichi Software as small but permanent fixtures in the world of video games. It was on this platform that *Cladun* began, a series that combined retro gaming aesthetics with the enduring features of contemporary, premium handheld gaming.
*Cladun* struggled a bit to survive the PlayStation Vita’s relative floundering, but now, with the Nintendo Switch (and the upcoming Switch 2), it’s the perfect time for a comeback. *Cladun X3* is a curious entry for a few reasons. In a world saturated with dungeon-crawling RPGs, there isn’t much else quite like it.
### What is Cladun X3 About?
Am I a baddie? Probably. *Cladun X3* revolves around a death game—but not in the style of something like *Danganronpa*. Instead, you play as an immortal jellyfish person running a mysterious island called Arcanus Cella, where villains have been summoned from across time and space. The idea is to force these villains to fight each other, keeping them from becoming menaces to society.
You are one such villain, apparently waking up on the island with no memories of your past. Still, while you’re here, you might as well power up and participate in the ensuing violence. Your options for powering up? Dungeons—lots and lots of dungeons.
### Gameplay and Dungeons
There are story dungeons, random dungeons, map dungeons—you get the picture. The basic gameplay loop is fun and simple, designed for fast and furious, bite-sized sessions. Cladun’s dungeons only last a few seconds; the goal is to run through as fast as possible, blasting enemies and avoiding traps in search of the exit.
You can explore more thoroughly to find treasures and hidden goodies, but you’re generally discouraged unless you need to grind.
### Sphere Grids for Spreadsheet Nerds!
Grinding is absolutely necessary, as it’s easy to hit walls in *Cladun*. Progression isn’t just about leveling up—though that’s part of it—but centers more around Magic Circles. These are progression maps where you assign sub-characters to tracks fueled by mana points. On these tracks, you place stat-boosting artifacts that all lead to your main character.
If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is! The sub-characters act as shields, taking damage before your main character does. But if they get knocked out, you lose all benefits from their lanes on the equipped Magic Circle, potentially derailing your offensive or defensive abilities for the rest of the dungeon.
As you play, you’ll gain more mana, stronger artifacts, and new Magic Circles to experiment with. Managing all this can be a real pain, though. The gains are incremental: for example, one point of ATK costs three mana, but two points cost seven. Since you typically gain only one or two mana per level, progression feels slow—(in theory) offset when you unlock more complex Magic Circles with more character slots.
Each time you try a new Magic Circle, you start over with artifact placement, meaning you’ll spend a lot of time poking through menus, doing mana math, and desperately trying to optimize your build as best as you can.
### Increasing Challenge and Frustrations
Meanwhile, enemies get tougher, with deeper HP pools and harder hits as you progress through the story. Unless you’re lucky with item drops, there’s only so much your equipment stats can carry you. Eventually, taking just a few hits will knock out a sub-character (your defense is halved when you run, by the way), nullifying your hard-earned gains in seconds.
This can be incredibly frustrating, especially since later dungeons fill the screen with enemies wielding massive area-of-effect attacks. Combat slows down considerably as you’re forced to play more cautiously against faster, stronger, and more numerous foes.
### Grinding in Bonus Dungeons
Ran-geons and map-geons should serve as great places for grinding. After all, they’re bonus dungeons with randomized elements that appear early, providing opportunities to level up.
However, you can easily end up in tough situations with no chance of victory and no way out but to escape. Normal escape exits are random, so if one doesn’t appear, you must run for gates until an exit spawns, give up, or die. The penalties for dying are harsh—you lose all your items and most of the experience and money you’ve earned.
It’s often more productive to replay a recent story dungeon over and over to grind levels. Yuck.
### Making Cladun Your Own
Grinding can be a drag, but there’s an under-the-radar aspect of *Cladun X3* that creative players might love.
The main and sub-characters aren’t scripted story participants—you create custom recruits, Dragon Quest III style. The customization options are frankly wild. Nearly every element of *Cladun X3* is editable. You can design your own sprites, starting from scratch or using templates. You can customize equipment, flavor text, and even design your own hub map.
There’s even a fully-fledged music composition tool included, allowing you to write and assign your own background music tracks across the game. It’s absurd—in a great way.
If you’re a creative type who enjoys grinding levels in a laid-back environment, you can craft your own little retro RPG world. It feels like an Animal Crossing for RPG fans, stopping just short of becoming a full RPG Maker-style experience.
And if customization isn’t your thing, you can ignore it entirely and play through the story without missing anything.
### Final Thoughts
If *Cladun X3* were tuned just a little differently, it could be the perfect time-killing grindfest. Picking characters, customizing them, and running bite-sized dungeons for numbers-driven dopamine sounds like a recipe for good times.
But having to tinker endlessly with the Magic Circles for gains that feel disproportionately small compared to the time invested, while rapidly being outpaced by scaling dungeons, makes the progression pace feel slow and arduous.
I enjoy grinding to an extent, but *Cladun X3*’s demands feel a bit excessive. I respect the wild creativity on offer, but the way the game requires your time in exchange for flimsy rewards weakens its ability to truly capture my attention.
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*Cladun X3* launches on September 26, 2025, for the Nintendo Switch, PC, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A Switch review code was provided by the publisher.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146007/cladun-x3-review-score
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