Chaos Legion

"Chaos is order"

My friend who's a game freak loves telling me about games, about whether they're great, annoying, curious or whatever else. He once mentioned about Chaos Legion in PS2, but unfortunately, I knew no one who owned PS2, so I thought I'd never ever played the "supposedly fun" game. But I was fortunate enough that another friends has a PC version of Chaos Legion, and that is when I started playing the game.

Plot/Character: 9/10

The game starts with the backstory of two former friends who are now of different allegiances. The evil one claims that the other one, the hero, has done an unforgivable mistake by killing his love. Burdened with guilt, the hero, Sieg chases after his friend trying to stop him from doing what he believes to be harmful.

The story part is not that much of a star, but the character depiction is the other way around, especially when it comes to their emotions. There are wrath, guilt, vengeance and everything else mixed into the characters, and those make the game novel, and good.

Gameplay: 7/10

Sieg is a swordsmaster, so it's just right that he has a few sword techniques. The most common one you'll see is the multi-hit strike, which is not the most useful one but fancy nonetheless, and besides, it will be your main way of killing enemies. There's an unfortunate downside to this however: When Sieg starts slashing, it becomes rather hard to control him, that is, it gets very hard to make a turn, which can be bad because of the reason stated two paragraphs below.

Aside from the sword, Sieg has multiple inhuman creatures, known in the game as legions, to aid him. This is where the fun starts: Each legion will give you a set of bonuses. First: you can summon them to help you clear the area of enemies. Second: with specific legions, you can perform special attacks, which aren't always useful but still good anyway. Third, the best one: the legions will give you either stat bonuses or special abilities. Now, the special abilities are what makes the legions great to use, be it double-jump, sommersault, etc.

The basic play of the game is uniform the whole game. You start from a point, bash all enemies or mini bosses, kill the boss and finish the stage. Each part is a problem, though. First, you are often surrounded by A LOT of enemies. And I do mean A LOT, and surrounded, and this problem gets old too quickly. Never expect to see only one or two minor enemies heading your way, period. This is one reason why being unable to control Sieg well when he's killing enemies is dangerous. Not to mention that they can attack simultaneously, and Sieg will often flinch when he gets hit, so you know the problem.

Then there goes the bosses. Each boss can take a lot of beating before going down. True, most bosses have battle patterns, but this means trouble in another part. Obviously you can imagine how boring boss fights wil be if you see the same attacks for a long time, correct?

Still, thanks to the legions, you are quite free to use whatever kind of methods to beat up enemies and bosses, so things aren't that bad afterall. Or I'd rather say, the fun of killing spree and the pain of monster beating even out.

Oh, and with regard to character empowering, this game is an action RPG, in a mixed way. Your legions will get more powerful the more enemies you beat up, but your hero wil get powerful the more items he collect. The later part of the game requires you to level up to legendary stats nothing short of it, or you'll be in for a hard game. This is actually implied by the survival element, especially in the beginning part of the game: You have rather limited resources, and experience points are rather rare. Still, once you can press on, you can leave that survival element behind.

Playability: 4/10

Simply put, this game is HARD. Pretty much speaking, only gaming veterans may play this game; beginners will get stressed out in an instant because of the gameplay. End of case.

Visual: 8/10

The backgrounds aren't that jaw-dropping, but good nonetheless. The level design is good overall. Character display is quite wonderful. The animations are quite well done too. It's just that some enemies are reused and recolored to make different enemies, which cuts the creativity point by a bit.

Audio: 9/10

Here comes one of the best parts of the game: The music. Overall, every tune always has aria or choir in it, aside from the great music themselves. I myself love them to the extent that I love humming them.

Then the voice acting is pretty much well done, aside from some bad voice acts here and there. the main downside of the audio is the sound effect. Some are just appropriate, but some other... ergh. Still, mediocre at the very worst, so don't fret ^_^.

Replay value: 6/10

beating the game once will unlock a new game mode, and beating the new game mode will unlock even another. Unfortunately, the later it is unlocked, the harder it gets, which can be very discouraging, especially since the survival element gets more strict the harder the game mode becomes. The easiest mode is already neck breaking, and the hardest mode will frustrate you to the point you may want to break your PS 2 or PC. Replay with caution.

Overall:

If you are a gaming veteran, this is a good game to add to your collection. trust me, it's worth it. I got addicted to it after a few days of playing, even when it comes to the frustrating times ^_^.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/20/04