Generation of Chaos for the PSP. A game most people have never even heard of let alone played. I am torn on this game and as the review moves on you will find out why. I found this one day a few years ago when Gamecrazy still existed. I went to them instead of the Gamestop accross the street because the atomosphere was just more friendly and non-sterile. I know what you are thinking, why are these details important? The answer is that it is only at a place like that that you will find a game like this. Gamestop would probably toss this thing out the window because no one knows it exists.
This game tries to take the strategy genre and the rpg genre and mix it with large scale battles not to mention immense attacks. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no. Let's start with the gameplay.
The setup is simple. The map is a series of squares lined up sort of like candyland. there are paths that lead to each of the bases. That being said, each of your commanders has a set amount of spaces they can move. Typical stuff really. You can have on the board over 20 commanders. That being said and adding that it almost operates like Risk, you would think that it would be fantastic but short. You would be able to sweep the entire world map in a single go, wiping out all that came in contact with you. Is this true? No! They thought it would be a great idea to limit the amount of moves you can make to five a round. The hell is up with that? Not to mention that actions within the base factor into that so you can't have someone move into a base and get straight to exploring or anything like that.
Factoring into that, some actions on the overworld have a cooling time. That's right! Sometimes when you do something it will take more than one round to recover. You may think that that would force you to think things through and use tactics but no. It's just stupid for the sake of stupid because most of the time you only have about 5 commanders that are any good anyway and thus have at least one of them on every base you have that can be attacked.
Then there are Open Lots. On these spaces, if you own them, you can build one of a few structures on that spot. However sometimes what you can build there makes no sense! You can build a 'base', and I put quotes on that because the reality is it's supposed to be a graveyard. It's a place that if units pass over them, there is a chance that they will be stopped to face a RANDOM ENCOUNTER!!! I say that not as an iCarly reference but from the fact at how dickish some of these encounters are not to mention how jarring random encounters are to begin with. Most of the time, these encounters will destroy your commanders but the computer seems to do just fine against them.*growl* That being said, you can build other things like hospitals and recruiters but the most hilarious one is the forts. Forts are fun because they are like a free generic armies you don't have to pay and are fully healed at the end of the encounter. If you know what you are doing, you can fight off most people. Not kidding. Best fun ever.^_^
One last thing about the overworld, You make or lose money depending on your bases and how many commanders you have. That is right, you have to manage an empire, your commanders, and your pocket book. Thus why I said earlier that you will only have about 5 commanders that are any good. You really will want that money for later to build up your bases. Trust me, I won't get into it now, but that is mildly important if you want most of your commanders to be properly equipped.
All of that being said, I move onto the actual battles. The concept was simple. Take the idea of RPG stats for the main character, equipment and abilities intact and give them an army of 29 units of a variety of types to factor in tactics and make it unique. The first important question about this brilliant concept is did it work? Sort of yes sort of no. The battles are mainly set on autopilot. You only have a few things you can control. At the beginning of a battle you can decide what formation to use. The only important things this decides is placement of your commander and what percentage of your stats are increased or decreased. This is both important and stupid. IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE STATS MAKE THEM MEAN SOMETHING!!! I know it was supposed to be brilliant because you could adapt your stats to a given opponent but at the same time, the more you play through this game the more you realize the only stat you will ever raise during a level up is your strength or intelligence based on what kind of attack your commander uses.
Even more problems exist with the armies themselves. At first, it seems brilliant. Hey, I don't get to tell each one what to do but how bad could it possibly be? If we are are talking about execution, its crap. None of them are intelligent at all. They run straight at the enemy and attack whatever is closest instead of, ya know, THE ENEMY COMMANDER! Your army will destroy every last member of the enemy army before they register they have to destroy the leader. That is the only person you have to kill. That's right, You only have to kill the leader. It doesn't matter and the same is true in reverse. It's not like your men have personality or the will to fight and save their leader. Nope, you run out of HP, battle over.
I think my favorite tactic that seems to be able to handle everything but the boss monsters is spamming super moves until your opponent has no chance to win. You see in this game, based on how much damage you do or recieve your super meter at the bottom of the screen fills up. It only goes up to 3 before stopping. This means you can stock pile 3 super moves. When you realize that a single super move cripples your opponent's entire army and that the bar fills up rather quickly, you will adopt the same tactic. Especially when you find out that if you time the activation of ANYTHING so that your opponent has started their attack but hasn't hit yet, their attack won't count. Oh, they will attack and the game will treat it like they attacked but they will do no damage.
The veteran gamers will say, but Chibi, to take advantage of such a bug would be unfair. This brings me to one very important point. This game is ball-bustingly hard. My rule is if a game wants to play hardball, take advantage of every single advantage you can get your hands on. I am going to give you a simple and true illustration of what the hell I am talking about. In this game, no matter what story you choose, you have to fight a dragon. I don't mean dragon as in Baby Dragos or Wyvern. No, I mean building sized, elemental, people eating, overpowered monsters of people killing death! These things have so much health that even the max number isn't even close to half of their health sometimes.
Most of the time, You will have to send in a sacrificial commander that doesn't mean as much to you, just in case you lose them, just to soften them up so you can actually beat the damn thing. These things are overpowered, unfair and genuinely a problem. When one appears it is usually out of no where in a spot that you didn't expect it and it sends out it's henchmen(not wanting to get into the problems with that part of it alone) to take over a huge chunk of your empire before you can do anything at all. Then when you finally trim them back and corner them, you have to pull out all the stops and hope they don't rip your face off.
This brings me around to my biggest problem with this game. IT'S FREAKING HARD!!!! Everytime you complete whatever the hell goal they put in front of you, they applaud you by throwing another hard as all hell battle at you as if to taunt you. It's sort of like finishing hiking all the way up a mountain and as soon as you get to the top, someone with a beanbag cannon aimed at your balls fires full force and as you are writhing in pain and anger tells you to do it again.
You think I am kidding? In the beginner's story, the EASY story, You know the one with the tutorials, You go along through mildly tough odds until you come to a choice. It's either love or duty. When I first went through I ended up going for duty and when I eventually got my hands on the game again I remembered why. If you choose love, you have to start from scratch with a brand new army and not only do you have to defeat your old army but even some new members to that old army. After that uphill battle they shoot you in the groin by saying, "Good job. Oh, and do you remember that dragon you had to fight earlier that was a pain but not impossible? We are going to throw 5 dragons that are twice or even three times as strong and you have to beat all of them. Good luck, and remember, the strongest of them has no elemental weakness you can take advantage of."
Idea Factory, the makers of this game, are sadistic and brilliant. The animations for the unique super moves and the story is awesome. I love the characters and when you get to know how to play it, it is probably one of the most fun RPGs on the PSP. It hands you nothing. You have to fight it out every step of the way and even though when you realize this is just a game, you feel like you have done nothing, in the moment, you feel acomplished. You feel like even though you were cheap shotted in the tiddlywinks, you man'd up and showed this sadistic game who is boss.
I would suggest any Strategy RPG fans at least try this game, though make sure your PSP is in a shock proof case.
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