When Devil May Cry 2 got you down, try Chaos Legion
Overview
It’s cool when companies take a stab at new franchises, so I was looking forward to Capcom’s latest, Chaos Legion. After playing that mess called Devil May Cry 2, I was starved for a good, Capcom action game. Mixing elements from that series and Dynasty Warriors, I found myself a worthy alternative. Sorry Dante, but Seig is taking the stage this year.
Graphics 9/10
Definitely a gothic feel to it, which in this case is cool. The backgrounds are kind of basic, nothing to outstanding. Capcom liked to use grey, black, and white a lot on this game. There also quite a bit of fog which I'm not sure if it's purposely done or was a sacrifice for the number of characters on the screen. Matter of fact, there's tons of characters on the screen. It easily gets into the twenties w/ Sieg, main character, your Legions, and all the bad guys. The monsters are pretty cool while the bosses are huge. Very impressive, w/ no slowdown. The characters models are the best w/ Sieg and Victor looking just plain awesome. CG movies are fantastic, Capcom is reaching Square/Tecmo quality.
Gameplay/Controls 8/10
This is where Chaos Legion really shines. It's your typical hack n' slash, but it's so much deeper than that. You can call out Legions which are monsters that help you in battle. They have their strengths and weaknesses. The Guilt Legion is good against organic enemies while the Malice is perfect for mechanical. Legions can also make fighting easier like using Blasphemy on the larger creatures and knocking them on their back. The more you use a Legion, the more experience it gets which you can use in between stages to level up strength, defense, number of them, or new attacks. The game is not a walk in the park like some people say. You can only have two different Legions per stage, so you could end up w/ the wrong ones, which can end up in defeat. Certain situations cause for certain Legions. Like the level 5 boss is surrounded by mechanical enemies which calls for Mailce, then you quickly need to switch to Guilt to break open the boss hard shell and expose the weak spot. Then you quickly need to dodge it's attacks and bring out the Mailce once gain for the boss calls for reinforcements. You need to know you pro and cons for your Legions or else yuo have to start the section again. Who ever said this game was easy was lieing, sort of. The stages themselves are easy to get through, but the boss fights are really tough. I spent an hour on one boss alone.
It takes some getting use to. Square let's you attack w/ your sword while X jumps. Circle let's you lock on which can send you Legions to attack a certain monster. Triangle let's you do an assist attack w/ your Legions causing more damage. When you have you Legions out triangle also sends them to attack. L2 switches between your two Legions while L1 calles them out. R2 changes the mode from action to passive, or vice versa. Action let's your Legions atatck on their own free will, while passive has them hanging around you not attacking. R1 is Sieg's lock on which also allows you to side step, roll, or back flip depending on what direction you hit along w/ the X button. It took me a couple stages, but now I can handle just about anything that gets in my way. The camera can get in the way, but I barely run to any problems w/ that. I haven't been killed by anything I can't see.
Sound/Music 7/10
The music is great and a little wierd. CL is called a gothic opera which the music goes along w/ the theme. You got a mix of opera, gothic, and sometimes rock music. The music isn't distracting, so you can killed endless hoards of baddies w/out being annoyed by crappy themes. The sound effects are good, nothing spectacular. The voice acting is really good, no gay main character voice. They did the cast really well and it helps move the CG movies nicely.
Replay Value 8/10
The game doesn’t take that long to beat. I say between five and eight hours of game play. After you beat it you can try a harder difficulty. Unless you really like the game, there’s no other reason to come back.
Overall 8/10
The graphics are not the greatest, they good for their purpose, but they could of used more variety in the way the stages look and that fog needs to go. The game play is where Chaos Legion shines w/ the action of DMC and the sheer number of people on the screen like DW. The leveling up is cool and you get a good challenge from the boss fights. If you liked DMC or Dynasty Warriors, and you hated DMC2, you should check this out. This game has some problems but that's nothing a sequel can't cure.
- By Cold Man X
