Video Game / Crusaders Quest

Match Your Way To Victory

Crusaders Quest is a Korean online puzzle-action-RPG developed by Loadcomplete and published by Hangame/NHN Entertainment, which before was known as Toast.

100 years ago, there was a great battle called the Apostles War, where Goddesses and Apostles fought over the land of Hasla. The Goddesses successfully fight back the Apostle leader, El Thalnos with the help of a band of heroes nicknamed the Chrona Heroes, however this was only the beginning of things...

Prestina, the Forest Goddess is attacked by a mysterious force. Sera, the Forest Goddess in training, asks you, newly recruited mercenary captain, for help. You then go around the world helping people and goddesses alike, at which the plot slowly develops from a fairly-standard The Chosen One story into a much more complex one with multiple major antagonists and branching story arcs.

The game combines content from Season 1, known as "Soulstone Chronicles," with Season 2, titled "Kalard Chronicles," which introduces a substantial amount of additional in-game material and features.

The game is available for iOS on the App Store and Android on Google Play, alongside a sci-fi rhythm spinoff called Ride Zero ^note  which was sadly, shut down.

On October 5th, 2023, the game reached its conclusion with a final update known as "Epilogue." This update marked the end of a development journey spanning nine years, prompted by challenges related to outdated code and a decline in player activity. The developers assured the player community that game servers will be maintained indefinitely, allowing everyone to continue enjoying the game.

Currently Loadcomplete is working on "Goddess Order", Action-RPG.

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Crusaders Quest contains examples of:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Definitely. The local blacksmith, Fergus, will upgrade your weapons for a fee. There is a chance for him getting a Great Success, a maximum value for the upgrade (be it HP, Critical Chance, whatever). If you are not satisfied with the result, you can reroll your upgrades. However, the upgrade price increases exponentially with each upgrade, and the costs can reach 10,000+ gold if you keep trying to upgrade the same weapon (but you can reset the price with some gems or simply bypass it using Fergus points).
• All There in the Manual: There are in-game tomes that give interesting trivia about the heroes and the setting of the game.
• An Adventurer Is You: There are six distinct character classes, each with their own characteristics.
  • Mighty Glacier: Warriors always appear at the front lines and deal the bulk of physical damage. They have high defense and above-average health, but lacks resistance to most other types of damage.
  • Stone Wall: Paladins focus on healing and supporting other units, utilizing high resistance, defense and health to compensate for low damage.
  • Jack of All Stats: Archers are ranged attackers with a balance of defense and resistance. They specialize in hitting the opponent's backline units. However, they have fairly low health themselves.
  • Glass Cannon: Hunters are ranged attackers who deal massive damage to groups of enemies on the front lines. Trading this out, however, they have low health and moderate defense.
  • Black Mage: Wizards use powerful magic attacks, but they also have low health and defense.
  • White Mage: Priests are healers who specialize in patching up their teammates and providing damage resistances, along with having above-average health to endure more than a few hits. However, their attack power is the lowest out of all classes, and such should not be depended on for damage.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Meat is the standard fuel unit needed to go on missions and quests, and meat can only be refilled through Coliseum battles and spending gems (and leveling up your profile).
• Artifact of Doom: The Apostle's Shard qualifies as one.
• Captain Ersatz: A few of the heroes—Viper, Vane, and Mandy, for example—are thinly veiled parodies of characters from other works.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: There are six symbols for the six types of heroes and their weapons. Warriors are red, Paladins are blue, Archers are green, Hunters are yellow, Wizards are purple, and Priests are pink.
• Convection, Schmonvection: There is a stage set in the Deep Sea, where the heroes navigate and engage in battles as if they were on solid land.
• Constructed World: The world of Hasla is a vast continent reminiscent of Pangea, characterized by a diverse array of nations, each with its own unique culture and identity (taken from real life). Among the notable nations and regions are the powerful Neth Empire, the majestic Grancia Empire, the enigmatic Nosgard, the Eastern Kingdoms of Ryu, Chen, and Han, the venerable Roman Republic, and the loosely affiliated confederation of Minor Tribes, along with several other regions and factions.
• Dispel Magic: Goddess Aubrey and some heroes can remove all allies' debuffs and grants them immunity debuffs. Some heroes . Some bosses in Raid can do it too.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: Season 1 Episode 6 is about the Neth Empire at war with itself, demons and the Grancia Empire. Season 2 Episode 6, is about everyone in the world sieging Grancia Empire because the Emperor Alexander got into the [[Brainwashed unpleasant situation]] and declared war on everyone.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: There are many instances of it in the game.
  • The cutscenes have more than three heroes and one goddess.
  • Goddesses go separately in the cutscene, while still being available during the gameplay.
• God in Human Form: The goddesses themselves, of course. When you unlock a goddess, you can take them to stages, which would have a bar which if one is filled, they can cast a special attack. Combat aside, you can also talk to them back in the town.
• Guest Fighter: There are limited edition characters from the collaborations with other franchises, such as Guilty Gear, Goblin Slayer, Manga/Berserk, Octopath Traveler, Re:Zero, Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger, and many more, 14 collaborations, to be exact. They were available during two weeks in different times, and currently are not obtainable.
• Heroic Resolve: Your character avatar consistently displays unwavering determination and courage during the cutscenes.
• Hurricane of Puns: Lots of 'em in character profiles.
  Bear Fancier's profile: Bear in mind to join a Bear Loving Meeting, one must wear a self-made bear outfit. Real bears find this unbearable as they are barely indistinguishable from actual bears. This often becomes a grizzly situation.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Many heroes can utilize their respective unique weapon called a Soulbound Weapon (also referred to as an SBW), which is forged through the use of rare in-game resources (Old Weapons, gold, iron, and crystal sword fragments). These specialized weapons will greatly enhance the passive abilities of the matching hero. They are also extremely difficult to acquire, requiring a combination of luck and resource grinding.
• Infinity -1 Sword: There are rare six-star weapons that can be acquired for all classes. They are not as powerful as Soulbound Weapons, and they do not have special effects, but they do have very good stats.
• Magical Library: Library of Dimensions. Used for cataloguing your achievements in the game and looking at the Hero illustrations and Hero Stories.
• Match-Three Game: The core gameplay mechanic revolves around the continuous generation of random blocks. Players must strategically click on these blocks to match them specifically for their chosen heroes. You can create chains of up to three matching blocks. The heroes in the game employ their unique skills during real-time battles based on the number of matched blocks: one block triggers a weak skill, two blocks activate a medium-level skill, and chaining three blocks together unleashes the hero's most powerful and impactful skill. Importantly, many of the heroes' passive abilities, particularly those tied to their Soulbound Weapons (SBW), are activated in conjunction with these block matches, adding depth and complexity to the gameplay experience.
• Nintendo Hard: The game is actually fairly easy and manageable during the early parts of the story. Until it isn't. You need to have heroes that have more powerful skills, trained to the MAX, berried to the MAX, and have Inheritance leveled up to the LVL 40 (MAX).
  • Season 2 ramps it up via gimmicks such as bombs, flash grenades, and even smoke bombs that you have to use to break the enemies' defenses. Each episode revolves around different strategies; such as countering reflect damage, or parrying enemy attacks to avoid instant death.
  • Legend of the Primal Flames pushes it into truly masochistic territory; where you have to press a pattern of attacks to parry a certain attack; if you miss once, you're dead. Oh, and don't forget the environment there is also against you! [[The difficulty was significantly reduced in one of the patches, primarily because the reward wasn't worth the hassle it for the hassle.]]
  • Challenge Mode in Crusader Quest takes Scenario Mode to the next level, putting players through an intense Boss Rush across stages. In this mode, enemies are considerably more powerful, but the rewards are equally substantial. Be on the lookout for secret bosses that are exclusive to Challenge Mode!
  • Raids in Crusader Quest present a formidable challenge due to the presence of gimmicks that can swiftly eliminate your heroes if you fail to time the activation of their Goddess skills correctly. These gimmicks often involve temporarily disabling the use of your Goddess skills, necessitating careful conservation and precise timing to overcome these gimmicks.
• Non-Entity General: You play as a mute and featureless mercenary captain who was hired by the lady knight Lednas to mobilize various heroes for battle. When you do show up in cutscenes, you're represented as the hero you selected as your account avatar.
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: There are numerous costumes that can be bought for 40 gems each. They also boost a hero's stats by certain amounts.
• Another Dimension: Significant plot point of the Season 2's story, alongside with Alternate Universes.
• One-Hit Kill: Certain enemies can buff themselves with Instant Death On Contact, meaning when your units come into physical contact with them, they will instantly die, no matter how much damage resistance they have.
• Our Gods Are Different: The Goddesses aren't exactly godlike beings in the traditional sense. Instead, they were former humans promoted to divine status, and can lose their power, so the correct term would be Demigoddesses. The only exceptions were Dionne, Chronos and Elanuma as they are daughters of Cora, a true goddess.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: It's very common for Legendary and Master heroes' hair to change color upon their final promotion.
• Random Number God: The RNG affects many game resources, such as buying contracts, weapon upgrades, skill transfers, and the Soulbound Weapon that is produced when an Old Weapon is forged. You can re-roll the results with gems and Bridget Points, but the process is still completely random.
• Schizo Tech: The fantasy theme of the first few Episodes revolves around starts to mingle with robots, Steampunk elements and military fashion as seen in Episodes 5 and 6.
• Socialization Bonus: You can send honor points to other players (and get free meat in return), and they can send honor points to you. In addition, you can bring the profile heroes of your friends with you on quests, which is helpful if you want to take a Soulbound Weapon for a test drive.
• Stalked by the Bell: Episode 8-2 has a time-limit where stalling makes more enemies come after you. Even worse, the more you stall, the more powerful the enemies are!
• Sword Beam: Hero Monte Cristo has the skill that is literally sends sword beams, called "Sonic Sword".
• Signature Move: Every Hero has a signature move.
• A Taste of Power: The prologue titled "Stage 999: Evil Omen" starts you off with 3 invincible heroes that each have 2x attack speed and block rates. It's only after that you end up with just the 3* Leon,
• Theme Naming: Many characters are named after important historical figures.
• Team Chef: Chocolat, the Hero's Town baker.
• Those Two Guys: The two members of the Goddess Fan Club. They spend their time trying to flirt with the Goddesses, but their endeavors are always doomed to fail. This puts them at odds with Lednas, whose default response is to call for some men to drag the two idiots away.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: There are six weapons to differentiate the six Hero types.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Warrior units can equip swords and blades.
  • Paladins can equip hammers.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Archers can equip bows.
  • The Gunslinger: Hunters can equip guns and rifles.
  • Magic Staff: Wizards can equip staves.
  • Power Crystal: Priests can equip magical orbs.
• Main/Reincarnation: Your avatar, the mercenary captain, along with other legendary heroes, are the incarnations of the heroes who fought in a Apostle war a century ago.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After defeating Dark Sera, Sylunis escapes, and is never to be seen again. Aubrey had suggested a search for her, but nothing resulted from this. Much, much later however...
  • ...Sylunis returns in Episode 7 as the White Goddess. It turns out that when she tried to summon all of the Apostles to create El-Thalnos, the soul of Elanuma sealed in the Apostles entered and purified her.
• With a Foot on the Bus: Used in the end of Season 1 to some goddesses and heroes, in preparation for the Time Skip for Season 2.
• Wizard Classic: Hero Transmuter Winston, but subverts it by being muscular but without any strength as he magically transmuted his weak muscles to look muscular.

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