Mildly Chaotic
0~3 Entertainment brings JRPG crossover goodness Stateside, but will anyone actually care?
Published: June 21, 2008
Another interesting little wrinkle that happens randomly: skills get stronger with use, eventually leveling up, which obviously makes for more powerful strikes or more helpful aids. Unfortunately, at random times during fights, the skills might change into something else. It could be good, it's usually not bad, but there's a definite chance that one skill may just morph into an identical skill to one you already have. You can prevent this by locking a skill or even unequipping it and throwing something else into one of the characters' skill slots, but then you're denying some of the game's more enjoyable wild card moments. Even if a skill does change into a duplicate, it preserves its level, so there's a chance it could end up being a more powerful version of something you already have.
Because so much is constantly happening during battles, be it random transformations of skills, specific attributes that are leveling up with a kill or some crazy five-person tag-team attacks, the game is almost always going somewhere -- even if the storyline isn't exactly following suit.
I'll be honest: Chaos Wars wasn't blessed with the best localization. In actuality, it's probably one of the worst translated and voiced games I've played since the 16-bit days. It's coherent enough, but with 0~3 Entertainment not having nearly the same level of localization staff or voice budget, things were bound to slip through the cracks. There are spelling and grammar errors aplenty, and if you can actually stomach the English voices in the game, then you're either deaf or quite possibly the most forgiving person on the planet. They are horribly acted -- the point where I actually thought they were still placeholders. Noope. If nothing else, though, you can at least switch to Japanese voices, which is all you'll hear mid-battle anyway, so it's probably for the best.
The game's storyline itself is something of a culprit too. The tale of an annoyingly snide little high schooler and his friends being whisked away to an alternate dimension, only to be split up and discover that they aren't the first to enter this new world, the personalities can be downright offensive at times. Endia, this world they've arrived in, is apparently used to getting travelers on a yearly basis -- travelers that are usually dubbed Knights because they gain the ability to "Realize," or transform into more powerful versions of themselves, after unlocking their true potential. It's really just an excuse to let what would be normal characters stand toe-to-toe with the more powerful ones in the crossover universe, and hey, who wouldn't want to turn into a badass mid-fight?
Using the Realize command is a temporary solution, as there's an ever-shrinking meter that governs how long the characters can change anyway, but having a bunch of Realized brawlers running around and beating the snot out of enemies (or, say, devouring their souls) for a few turns is quite fun, and usually a key strategy during boss fights.
It also leads to some of the most imaginative visual moments in the game. This is an SRPG, make no mistake, so the bulk of the graphical detail is going to come from the game's sprites, which are well animated enough, and fit well with the 3D backgrounds and light effects. They aren't going to amaze you or anything, but put up against the game's audio (the music part of which is actually pretty decent), it may as well be Square game.
Chaos Wars isn't a terrible game. It's a decent game with some terrible parts (the localization, mostly), and requires that you have at least a basic knowledge of most of the characters, some of which are frankly a little obscure and actually require that you be something of an import junkie. Still, this is probably one of Idea Factory's best SRPGs, and as someone who usually rolls their eyes whenever they see the name mentioned, it's actually a little refreshing to see them crank out a solid -- if flawed -- niche title.
Idle curiosity makes me sort of wonder how the story or characters would have turned out had the game been localized by an Atlus or an NIS America, but that doesn't mean there can't be some enjoyment had with the game. It's just that it's not going to be overwhelming, and with so many incredibly solid SRPGs on the PS2 at this point, Chaos Wars doesn't really have what it takes to stand out.
