Culdcept

Culdcept is a series of games developed by OmiyaSoft. The gameplay is an odd mix of Monopoly and a CCG. The players roll dice and move around a game board, needing to pass through one or more forts before returning to the castle, which acts similar to Go! from Monopoly. However, instead of simply buying property you place monsters from your hand on the spaces and opposing players can choose to fight them to try and get out of tolls. The more you upgrade a property, the higher the toll and the better protected the monster on it. Also included are a huge number of spells and item cards that can affect gameplay in many ways.

The original game, Culdcept, was developed for the Sega Saturn and later released on the Play Station. The original never left Japan Culdcept Second was released for the Dreamcast and later the PS 2, the PS 2 version released in other countries as just Culdcept. The latest entry in the series was Culdcept Saga, strangely released only for the Xbox360 in 2008. Finally, there is a Culdcept DS but...

The basic story is that Culdra, absolute Goddess, created Culdcept, the Book of Creation and Destruction. She then scatters pieces of the book, the cards, across the world and people who can control them become Cepters. If a Cepter passes certain trials, they become the god of a new world that they create. Each game also includes a story, usually involving beating someone evil to the godhood thing, and always peppered with oddball minions and elementally themed tribes.

The Culdcept game provides examples of:

 * All Just a Dream: Twice in Saga. Getting two different Bad Ends forces the hero to Take a Third Option.
 * Artificial Stupidity: A lot of cards have huge strategic value that requires some planning to use effectively, the computer opponent decks are often stuffed with these cards, which they immediately discard because their AI doesn't know what to do with them. Generally improved on in Culdcept Saga.
 * A Is also rarely take into account the abilities of your cards when deciding whether or not to use an item.
 * Armor-Piercing Attack: Some monsters have the ability to penetrate the land advantage a defending monster has; this is also the point of scroll attacks, which blow past defenses and can kill otherwise-indestructible enemies.
 * Attack Reflector: The Counter Amulet is an item that does this. Decoy is a creature that has the same effect naturally.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Most of the really big "direct damage all X" spells are ridiculously situational. Mildly "damage all X element monsters" are highly useful as long as your opponent is playing at least some of that element.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: In the English PS 2 version. Many cards have inaccurate or just plain indecipherable descriptions.
 * Chainmail Bikini: While many cards are fanservicy, the series avoided this until Sword Princess in Saga, who's outfit is more platemail lingerie.
 * Combining Mecha: The Air and Ground Gears combine if used together.
 * Dhampyr: One of the cards is this; he even closely resembles Vampire Hunter D.
 * Discard and Draw: Several cards do this, both offensively and defensively. There are also special spaces on some boards for this.
 * Elemental Embodiment: Each element gets a basic wall card which reflects its element's play style. Earth gets a cheap HP Sponge, Water a defended augmented with an HP boosting ability, Wind a wall with more attack than defense and First Strike, and Fire a wall that can invade other territory despite being a defensive type card. Non-Elemental gets a weak wall that is immune to attack from all elemental creatures.
 * As a bonus Paracelsus's elementals appear in their respective card elements. Though Undine is male for some reason.
 * Elemental Powers: The classic four western elements. While their isn't a hierarchy, fire vs water and earth vs wind both get more cards that are the deal more damage to or are resistant to their opposing element.
 * Earth gets mostly plants and wild animals, as well as a good helping of undead (with more moving this way from neutral in Saga). Earth is a mainly defensive element, getting mostly abilities that increase HP or give regeneration, but a lot of its monsters are just plain big, with enough power to be used offensively anyway. Tied to fire in Saga.
 * Fire excels in high attack, low HP cards. Many have additional abilities that grant them critical hits. The theme is fire and war, and most things that aren't directly elemental are explicitly warriors. Oddly, contains some of the best defensive monsters in the game, though they're a massive minority within the overall group.
 * Water gets... Are you ready for this? Sea creatures! It's the second defensive type, though its defenses come more from abilities and element immunities than Earth's sheer bigness. Not that it doesn't have big cards; Aspidochelone, for example, is a whale with an island on its back that gets stronger for every single round that passes.
 * Wind is the Fragile Speedster archetype element. Most of the creatures with First Strike are wind element. The element is overall movement and strike based, with even fewer defensively oriented cards than fire. Wind is tied to water in Saga.
 * Evolutionary Levels: Added in Saga. Most are straight upgrades, though a few cards can be evolved back and forth between each other.
 * Explosive Breeder: Powder Eaters, the game's weakest card (1/1 in a game where stats are base 10). When they use the move command, they duplicate instead of leaving the original space. Useful when combined with kamikaze weapons.
 * Fight Like a Card Player: Somewhat averted in Saga, where it becomes obvious that the cards exist in universe. Before that it's less clear.
 * Gotta Catch Em All: It is a mons game/CCG.
 * Mook Maker: Gooba Queen, a slime monster that can make mini-slimes appear on vacant spaces. Hive Queen is a variant, since her territory ability adds another Hive Worker card to your hand (and Hive Workers gain in strength for every one already on the field).
 * Non-Elemental: Neutral cards, which don't gain land bonuses under normal circumstances. In universe, they're "not aligned with any god" and include robots, some undead, and very basic animals.
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries: The Gooba Queen and Hive Queen, a slime and an ant, respectively.
 * Portmanteau: The series title, when read in Japanese (Karudoseputo), can be seen as a portmanteau of 'card' and 'cept' (likely from 'concept').
 * Taken for Granite: The monsters Medusa and Cockatrice turn monsters into Statue and Stone Wall respectively. There's also the spell Turn to the Wall, which makes a monster into its element's basic wall.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Cards whose strength is based on something you can control, like Leoknight and the elemental avatars, can get stats so high that they go right off the meter in battle.
 * Voluntary Shapeshifting: Several creatures. Baldanders turns into a random monster at the start of battle, Shapeshifter can become something else on the field, and Mystery Egg changes based on the weapon given too it. There's also Mesozoic Song, which causes all creatures you control to become Tyrannosaurus Rex during battle.
 * X Meets Y: Basically Magic the Gathering Meets Monopoly.