(7.8/10) A Fun Strategy RPG With Characters From Many Other RPGs
Chaos Wars was released in japan about 2 years ago, since the games characters are a collection of characters from many R.P.G.s that were released in the states by different companies it was never picked up for translation. Fast forward to 2008 Game stop decides and somehow manages to bring the game out in the US, now this translation job must have been done extremely fast and was certainly done with a tiny budget since no voice actors were hired to play the roles, instead friends and family of the translation team participated in the voice acting (thus making this THE WORST VOICE ACTING I've ever heard in a video game). The game features many character from various R.P.G.s(Shadow Hearts, Growlanser, Blazing Souls, Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir, Spectral Force, Spectral Souls, Hametsu no Mars, & Gungrave). Half of the R.P.G.s they come from never made it to the states so there's a lot of new ones there and I'm sure we missed out on a ton of inside jokes that was most definitely lost in the weak translation. 
I really really enjoyed Chaos Wars, I mean the game has great hi res sprites that look wonderful on large TVs, the music is usually good upbeat and sometimes even fantastic, the game must have been something wonderful in japan since they know mostly all the characters much more than the common US R.P.G. gamer. There's no ridiculous billions of HP points like in Disgaea but the game still manages to pull off its own style and has epic battles without the excessive numbers. The only thing i can really say that detracted from the whole experience is the translation AND voice acting jobs. I've always wondered why some R.P.G.s have the option to change the voice to Japanese.... I never NEEDED to change the voice to Japanese because most R.P.G.s nowadays have very good voice acting even the cheaper lesser known ones! Heck Sega CD games had 100x better voice acting than what lies on this disc... at first it just seems dull but you'll eventually reach the point that the lack of emotion in the characters voices will make you scream "ARE YOU SERIOUS!?" at your TV. When I switched the voices over to Japanese then the characters seemed to have more life, by the end of the game though i had shut voices off completely.
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Part of the J-rpg experience is to be immersed in the story as much as possible and voice acting plays a big part in that so that's why i prefer to have voice acting in English but when its as bad as this game i was forced to turn the voices off complete (something I've never done and have played and beaten many modern day R.P.G.s as well as old Sega CD & Saturn ones all of which had voice acting). I've never even spent this long talking about voice acting on a review! Which leads me to my next lil problem, they didn't really finish translating the game fully, even with the voices on English characters yell random Japanese phrases in battle. Another issue with the translation is the script of the entire game must not have been finalized or reviewed since the story is so loosely put together and there will be many times that you will have a long conversation between two characters lead you nowhere and you don't know what the hell is going on. 
The game-play is what i love about this game, it almost feels like a ps1 game but a ps1 game done right. I played Final Fantasy Tactics back when it was first released and before it Vandal Hearts so to me Vandal Hearts is king S-RPG, this title feels like it belongs in they're category, we may miss out a lot on the story but the game play and spells are wonderful and super fun. Lush colors and great environments will immerse you in the games world and the Arc The Lad: Twilight of the Spirits-like battle movements will have you moving your squad onto all kinds map battles. If you've played Shadow Hearts or Growlanser you'll feel very relieved when you recognize the characters from each game since you're supposed to be in an alternate universe and if you've ever beat a game with them you'll really feel like they're there with you keeping you company going through this one. 
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There's a ton of characters to choose from, many US gamers won't be familiar with many of them which is fine as long as your familiar with the ones we do know, or if you're just a Strategy RPG you'll enjoy the game just as much. The battle system is fairly easy to get into and combat...doesn't really have to take a long time. The overall combat system is pretty well done I suppose although it has its flaws as well. The storyline is at least decent enough to keep you going (if for no other reason but to see what other characters will be dumped off on your already ridiculously mismatched and linear party). 
A small group of translators brought this title over but you would think they proof-read the game before releasing it. Its got nothing to do with being a small company regarding proof-reading since it can't be that difficult or time consuming, you can beat the game in under 40 hours. Usually you'd have expectations on the translators Japanese skills. But since when do we need to worry about the translators basic English grammar that even a 10 year old should know? I noticed similar things in Mana Khemia as well, and I'm not sure where this is coming from. Growing up, I remember the majority of the R.P.G.s, whoever translated them, didn't have these problems with the English language. So why now? |
My guess is that with the growth of Anime and Manga fan subs, more people skilled in Japanese are available for translation jobs. People who may be great at Japanese, but seem to have a hard time with some of the basics of their own language. I noticed this on several occasions in the game and i suspect I'll see a few more before the end of my ps2 RPG journey. It's not like I'm a grammar baby, but I'm not used to seeing this many mistakes in any RPG that I've played, and this is a mistake a 10 year old shouldn't even make. "an" comes before a vowel. "a" comes before a consonant. That's not too hard is it? If you make a profession out of translating, then you should at least know that much. But in the end, im glad that we got at least this much in English. This game could have easily gotten a 9 but the bad translation and despicable voice acting took a whole point and half off for me. If you like Strategy R.P.G.s I suggest you go out and buy this game immediately, Game-Stop released it in very low numbers and the disclaimer at the beginning is just begging for a ban since this game contains copyrighted characters. Its 34$ used at Game-Stop since the game came out at 40$ new, there's already people taking advantage on e-bay and selling it for $60+ just because its rare, but the games worth 40$ at the most since that's about how much Final Fantasy Tactics cost when it first came out.
10/10/08 
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