Chaos Rings

By Lowkey. 25/11/10, 03:52 am

Normally I'm pretty good at restricting myself talking about games to people who don't play; I can keep it to general “I'm playing Halo with my buddies this friday,” or “this plot is really cool,” but Chaos Rings is different. Please talk to me about this game so I don't put non-gamers through it.

Ithy Wants To Be A Game Reviewer / Optional Reading: It's not a wonderful game. It's an iPod Touch / iPhone release RPG from a big name (Square Enix, no less) so it's got the production values of a big name console game. Nice to look at, beautiful character design, smooth intuitive controls, only gets repetitive if you're like me and compulsively over-level before each boss fight. This is unnecessary because it's an unbelievably easy game: casual platform means save-anywhere on top of skewing easy really quickly. You can chose the level of encounters (and turn them off), but this too is fairly selective and you can't play 10-20 levels above your character until quite late; you also regain HP after every battle (not MP, though). I stocked up healing items I never needed, didn't have any use for the 'defend' function. The plot is what you'd expect from Square Enix, I suppose: it's not amazing but it has its moments; Escher and Museia in most of the arcs are lots of fun, and Ayuta and Mana can be too.

Equipment is linear: you buy blade one, then blade two, and you can be guaranteed to be able to afford it. Skills are assigned by which "gene plates" you're carrying, each with different combinations of powers, which you gain from defeating monsters in that class; kill wolf enemies and your wolf gene plate gets new skills. Gene plates and money are shared between characters: after you've cleared your first play through, the other characters are a hundred times easier. Magic skills are in three elements, and come in single-target and multi-target. Still, it has enough variation to be exciting, the characters and promise of dialogue and plot development every boss or so will carry you through boring bits. Solo/Pair options for attacks are also interesting, although not as tactical as you'd think they'd be.

The puzzles are only frustrating maybe 20% of the time.

The Big Issue (if you haven't finished or haven't played, it's not too bad a spoiler mostly because you can see it coming really early on):

Spoiler:

Played? Considered playing?

By lil-craka. 12/04/11, 12:35 pm

Yeap i bought this not about 3 months ago...the game is oooohk..but not the best..i kinda expected more from SQUARE ENIX ...but abit let down after having to spend $16 on my iPod

so far i've only completed the story as the white hair'd swordsman guy and the blonde girl and pretty much Maxed lvl with them..but when i wanted to play the other characters..i was bored :/

The game is waaay to repetitive ... as there is no real difference in combat with the different couples

By Lowkey. 14/04/11, 02:43 pm

I quite enjoyed Escher & Museia. And maxed them. And defeated the secret boss on them. I tend towards overkill.

I do think the only reason this game sells for $16 is its developer's street cred. I would have to read some overwhelming reviews to spend that much on an iPod game from anybody else, and I'm not even that impressed by SE. Certainly repetitive-- even forcing you to re-collect gene plates would have fixed that a little by making you play with different skillsets.

On the other hand, it's probably still the best RPG that I've found for the iPod, Infinity Blade not withstanding. I tried Eternal Legacy, and it's just too awful to even attempt for more than 20 minutes.

By lil-craka. 14/04/11, 02:54 pm

i did like the fact that you could heal both characters if you used a Team-> heal ..and its stronger.. but towards End game ..i was just hitting Team -> attack and Overkilling everything :/ ... but i havent fought against secret boss yet ... is he/she/it hard?
hahaha Infinity Blade is sooo win Very Happy

i wish i could play it though..but sadly my Ipod is 2nd Gen..

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