New Western Launch Details for Culdcept the First: Saturn Tribute

Culdcept the First’s Western publisher provided new details Thursday in an English trailer that announced release dates and open preorders for the game’s console versions.

Clear River Games’ trailer says Culdcept is coming to Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series on Sept. 8. It also reaffirms that Culdcept will release July 30 on Steam, which Japanese publisher City Connection announced when it unveiled the game in February.

Clear River opened preorders on its website for the physical editions of the Switch and PlayStation 5 versions — it’ll be digital only on Xbox. Standard editions will cost US$29 while collector’s editions will cost $67.

The collector’s editions are called the Cepter Edition and will come with an art book, a two-CD soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro, nine acrylic standees of the game’s characters and 10 art cards.

Culdcept is a turn-based strategy card game that was developed and published by Omiya Soft on the Saturn in October 1997 before porting it to the PlayStation in May 1999. Both versions were only released in Japan.

Clear River is branding the Western version as part of the Saturn Tribute line, which makes sense, considering City Connection is using the same Zebra Engine to emulate Culdcept as it did for more than 20 other games that have been branded Saturn Tribute or S-Tribute.

The most recent Saturn Tribute release was a pair of Japanese exclusives, Farland Saga 1 and 2, which weren’t translated into English from their original Japanese when they were published in June last year.

But Culdcept the First is getting a new, official English localization, making it the second game City Connection has translated a previously Japanese-only Saturn title. The first time was in 2024 when it brought Assault Suit Leynos 2 to the Xbox and Steam, followed by the Switch, PS4 and PS5 the following year.

Clear River, a Swedish video game publisher established in 2020 and owned by Embracer Group, handled physical Western editions of Assault Suit Leynos 2 last year.

The Steam page for Culdcept the First lists the following features:

• 【Rewind】Rewind the game to any point someone passed a Checkpoint at a Fort or the Castle.
• 【Quick Save & Load】Enables you to save and load at any time, independent of the main game’s standard save function.
• 【Bonus Pack】Increases the number of reward cards received at the end of a match. This can be toggled ON/OFF in the options menu.
• 【Reveal Hands】This feature allows you to constantly display both your own and your opponent’s hand on-screen—information that was only visible at specific times in the original version. It can be toggled ON/OFF, and the display size adjusts automatically according to the game’s screen layout.
• 【Language Switching】You can play the game in either Japanese or English.

Culdcept’s modern release is called “the First” because City Connection is developing a prequel in the series called Culdcept Begins that’s set to launch July 16. Clear River is handling its Western physical version, too.