No matter how deep you bury an ancient evil, some power-hungry weasel always digs it up again. The imminent return of a corrupted former princess is dire news for the Crimson Empire, but action-RPG fans are in for a treat.

You can play as a sword-swinging mercenary, a master of elemental magic, or a stab-happy assassin — each ready to slay brawling tribesmen, rapid-fire archers, and clattering skeletons in an entertainingly distinctive manner. The wizard can freeze enemies before barbecuing them in place, while seeing the assassin stun nearby foes in a blur of colored mist never gets old. When things really get hairy, deploy auto-fire turrets, chuck flaming axes, or unleash your “ultimate” ability to slow time or blast through crowds.

Attractive and meandering environments conceal secret areas filled with gleaming treasure, and class-specific chests regularly present simple equipment upgrades. Unfortunately, that gear is the only tangible source of progression: you don’t earn experience points, so you’ll never get the satisfaction of leveling up or experimenting with skill-point distribution. Even gold seems valueless at the overpriced shops — by the time you can afford a decent piece of randomized merchandise, you’ll have found something better out in the wild.

Though Crimson Alliance lacks Torchlight’s endless character development and the infinite replayability of its bottomless dungeon, it delivers something that addictive gem didn’t: co-op play. Many of the land’s simple pressure-plate and target-whacking puzzles require more than one pair of hands, and teammate revivals save you from restarting at the last checkpoint. But the most gratifying moments come when you’re just happily filling the screen with a chaotic whirl of magic, steel, and debris.

On your first run-through, you can stampede through the world of Crimson Alliance in just over four hours, and you’ll know most of its killing fields like your own backyard not long after that. Nevertheless, it’ll take a good long time before tearing it up with a few pals loses its allure.

On Xbox Live Arcade

+ Three appealing classes, plentiful secret areas, good upgrade variety.

+ Co-op combat is a hectic blast, and occasional multiplayer puzzles reward teamwork.

– Weak character progression; short campaign; no randomized dungeons; pointless merchants.

? Why do enemy arrows sometimes act like homing missiles?

8.0