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Chaos Wars
Publisher: O-3 Entertainment
Developer: Idea Factory
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Platform: Playstation 2
Reviewer: Eric
 Capcom made the crossover popular with all its different fighting games. For
some unknown reason 0-3 Entertainment thought fans would love to see a crossover
between games like Shadow Hearts, Gungrave, Spectral Force, and Growlanser. Sure
all of these games were pretty good, but a crossover turn based strategy game?
Shadow Hearts was one of those RPG series that casual RPG gamers didn’t play.
All three of those games were fantastic, but the series did suffer with the
third game. Growlanser is another great, unique RPG game, but what about the
other two games? I myself haven’t even heard of Gungrave and Spectral Force.
Most people will be turned off with that factor. Again how many people know of
these characters? Chaos Wars is a neat turn based strategy game. Right now the
game is already hard to find, almost making it a born classic game within the
turn based strategy genre.
O-3 Entertainment ran with the games idea and it is mainly for the fans of these
games only. A game like this getting released in the United States is strange.
However strange it is for this game getting released here it does offer a ton
from all of these games; they didn’t half ass the gameplay and character input.
 The game does go ahead and tells you where the characters are from. This must
have been the way the developers got new fans to play the game, but they really
didn’t express this factor too much (read the box). Friends and foes of old
games too interact in Chaos Wars too and thankfully there is some background on
this, through the games no so stellar story.
Endia is a world that sits upon an ocean in the sky. Three friends go on a
little adventure one day and something goes wrong. A portal is found that leads Hyoma in a new world. Can he escape this new world or will he be calling it
home?
That is the story in a nutshell. The rest of the games story is made up of
different kinds of quests, which seems like there is no end. Chaos Wars will not
win any awards for the story. Most gamers will want to skip the games dialogue,
so why even have a story?
The in-game dialogue is made up of the worst voice acting ever! The games
developers, their friends, and family members do all of the voice acting. Was
the budget for this game that small or were some corners cut during the
development process? Hyoma’s voice actor is the only one that sounds like they
give a crap, everyone else is just not there, and they’re about 100 miles away.
 Chaos Wars best feature is the gameplay, other than the character rooster. The
typical turn based strategy grid is not included, you need to pick your
character and move them in a circle radius. I think this way is more interesting
than the grid they we are so use to. It gives the game a more realistic feel to
it.
There are enough skills in this game to make your head spin. I am not really a
fan of the fact that your skills can change without any notice; however you can
lock your skills down so they don’t change. Unfortunately the only way to gain
new skills is by having your old/current skills unlocked.
Like most turn based games (new ones), there are multiple character attacks. If
your characters are close enough to an enemy, everyone can get a attack. There
aren’t any cool cut scenes, you just see the same animations, but you do seem to
do more damage than normal. Just be careful when doing these attacks, enemies
can do the same thing and bosses tend to get more attacks than anybody in the
game.
 Speaking of boss battles, Chaos Wars is a hard game. The challenge starts of
easy and works its way to being one hell of a challenge. Boss battles tend to be
the hardest part of the game. Make sure you just keep redoing lower ranked
quests to build up levels. Chaos Wars can take an eternity to complete if you
sit there and level up all your characters, even the new ones.
The game also lets you level up attacks. By using the same skill over and over
again, it will keep gaining levels. Your characters will also gain new stats
either after one attack or by killing an enemy. Lower leveled characters will
have an endless spawn of text popping above their head whenever they battle
harder enemies.
Final Verdict
I don’t think Chaos Wars is an excellent game in the turn based genre, but it
shouldn’t be passed up. Fans of these games will benefit the most from this game
and I think that will hurt the game. This crossover event might not be what we
were looking for. Hopefully other companies will see what O-3 Entertainment
tried and they’ll try something unique like this.
Rating
7.75 out of 10
Chaos Wars Trailer
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