It’s encouraging to realize that a game that was crafted for a short play experience, could be designed so well as to have you coming back for more. Crimson Shroud’s New Game+ is one of these rarities: unlocking new locations, providing new weapons and dialogue, in addition to the obligatory second ending. The system is also deep enough to have little tricks, which are only made apparent after extended play. For example, rolling the dice for everything begins to bog down the experience, but then you realize you can “tilt” the dice off of the screen and into your inventory. Small feature, but adds a late game differentiator. The best part however is that the difficult truly hits it’s sweet spot. The normal difficulty keeps you thinking, but NG+ actually has you planning and using the entire range of tools at your disposal. You can still grind it out, but you’ll have to utilize item manipulation.
