Chaos Legion

"Look up melee and there will be Sieg's picture"

A horrific camera, faulty hit detection, and not enough enemy variety kill what could have been an utterly amazing game. CL harkens back to the mindless button mashing slaughter of famous/infamous classics like Streets of Rage and Double Dragon. This game is the very definition of both action and melee. Gameplay is easily summed up in getting from point A to point B and taking out everything in-between. Interesting characters and a decent story help draw you into the world and serve as the driving force between massacres.
Mourning the loss of Siela, Delacroix takes his religious fervor, evil possession, mania, and big sword off on a quest to combine the three worlds and purify the heck out of them. Standing in his way is Sieg, a man with the ability to summon Legions to do his bidding. Legions are where the game becomes interesting. They’re spirits (with nifty names like Malice and Blasphemy) that will give you special abilities, perform assist attacks, or go on an all out rampage by your side. The story is good and features decent acting. It has a good religious backing but it serves as a background, not like many games/movies that use religion then beat you down with metaphors and references. I would have really liked some more cut scenes and story sequences. There aren’t many movies and the quick text intros are nothing special. The plot doesn’t really meld together much until the end.
The graphics and music are very good (aside from the credit’s song, ouch). They really set a dark, decaying mood that fits with the game’s unholy setting but also remain fast paced and action-y. The controls are good and the layout doesn’t cause any real problems. A lot of Sieg’s moves aren’t really all that useful and a few border on distracting. Throughout the game I think I only used the double jump, flame attack, and shoulder charge. Everything else was just fluff. The Legions also suffer some usefulness issues. The beauty of the game is that there are different ways to play. You can use just Sieg, Sieg and assist attacks, or sacrifice some speed and strength and use the Legions and Sieg. At the beginning of the game you pretty much need the Legions. Sieg starts off very weak, so the loss of attack is barely noticeable. Then as you play more and Sieg gets stronger, the Legions aren’t as handy. Next, you reach a point where you’ve leveled up your Legions to an insanely strong point and you almost solely rely on them. Finally, you get Sieg to a godlike state where he can rip through just about anything in a few swipes or one shoulder charge. At that point even the best Legion maxed out isn’t worth the hit in attack and speed.
Now for the big problems. You fight the same enemies in almost every stage. At the beginning, it’s spiders and big guys. Next, it’s ninjas, Gozer Hounds (they look very similar to the things from Ghostbusters!), and cannons. Finally, it’s knights and shooters. A little more variety would be nice. There are so many possibilities that each stage could have easily had unique enemies. Heck, you fight four of the bosses two times each. There are also enemy regenerators that I wish were never included. They can spawn a limited amount of enemies, but it just gets boring. After you kill the one hundredth knight, you get insanely frustrated. Next is hit detection. Some enemies can miss by a mile and still knock you down or juggle you with that attack. Distance enemies have ungodly accuracy, so unless you take them all out first your ass is going down. The hit detection problems are very obvious if you play the extra one-hit-kill mode. I put about 20 bullets into an enemy and it didn’t die but then it rightfully would have missed me and I go down. I like the special character better than Sieg but she can’t an enemy standing one step in front of her. You’ll more often than not focus on the enemy the farthest away from you. Finally the nail in every 3D game’s coffin, a lousy camera. If there’s anything difficult about the game, it’s the camera. It will swing wildly, fight against you when you try to adjust it, and do everything it can to keep enemies off screen. AT times you’ll find out how good you are at doing about five things at once. You have to use the directions to move, R button to move the camera and get the enemies onscreen, jump, and rapidly hit the attack button to shoot in about a 1.5 second span. Your health and status frequently hide enemies. Sure you can turn off the display, but why on earth would you or should you have to?
I loved Chaos Legion at first, but the more I played the more the little things began to infuriate me. It has a ton of replay value (two characters that play drastically differently, three difficulties, and the one hit kill option) and I ended up beating it three times before writing this. But the third go around was really to just one-hit-kill the pain in the ass final bosses.
Final Score- 80/100 Adjusted to 8/10 for GameFAQs

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/04