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Chaos Knights Review
RRR Official Review - Chaos Knights
Review by gunsage
[b]Chaos Knights[/b]
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Title.jpg[/img]
RPGs, or rather, games in general nowadays have gotten too easy. In fact, a lot of the newer games that are supposedly hard are just that, but through seemingly artificial means. For example, my impression of Ninja Gaiden for the X Box was "Okay so effectively Team Ninja put in a bunch of crazy moves you can pull of if and only if you can remember the entire moves list which you probably won't, barely any savepoints, and your character has virtually no defense so any little hit hurts BAD."
The point is the original Ninja Gaiden for the NES wasn't like that. Yeah, it was tough as balls, but mostly from the level design and boss fights. Therefore, I was pleased when I played Chaos Knights for about 5 minutes and wound up dead because I was assuming it was going to be a simple, easy RPG. Am I saying I like dying in RPGs repeatedly and obnoxiously?
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image10.png[/img]
[i]Even in a land without color, Alexa is funky fresh with her purple speech windows.[/i]
Of course not. The point is Chaos Knights IS a tough RPG, so you should be well prepared to have your ass handed to you regularly if you're not used to old-style RPGs. As an example of what I'm talking about, you start with barely any money and yet you have no skills, nor do you develop skills. Now that doesn't seem very fair, but then again, the enemies aren't too terribly awful from the get-go, so as long as you pace yourself, you should be fine.
This forces you into a position where you either grind to ridiculous lengths so all your characters have all possible abilities and equipment immediately or you do some serious resource management and decide who's going to be the healer, fighter, etc. One thing I think we all can agree on, however, is the brilliant mapping in the game, minus a few small issues that don't affect the overall gameplay or come off as glitchy.
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image9-1.png[/img]
[i]And here we have the ominous Dungeon of Piss[/i]
The sound is also pretty good. You'll be treated to music from all kinds of RPGs and various other games as well. They fit the scenes very well. The dialogue and story is also pretty cool, though sometimes the dialogue can get a little cheezy. Overall, the game is pretty well developed and I think I only spotted maybe one grammatical error.
However, there are a couple of bad points I'd like to talk about. For starters, there are a few minigames you're subjected to that result in DEATH if you fail. Also, everything is pricey, even staying at an inn. The problem there? Well, in the first town, one of the main characters has a house, bed, etc. But you can't stay there. And you'll notice that this is a trend.
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image2-2.png[/img]
[i]...I think it's trying to tell me something[/i]
Even when it's something like "Let's rest here for the night and in the morning we'll set out on blah blah blah," your HP/MP will not recover. You never get an inch. Ever. Also, while I commend the developer for creating such a hard game, the bosses are overly hard. I actually considered not mentioning this at all, but ever since a certain spider boss in the game, almost every boss battle has been absolutely ridiculous and unbalanced.
As an example, let's take the spider boss battle. Up to that point there were a number of tough boss battles. And yes, on a few I perished because I just wasn't prepared enough. Okay, but in this game you can save anytime you want, so you just save before the boss battle, fight, and if you lose, load up so you can grind some more and try again.
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image5.png[/img]
[i]Today on "Pimp My Basement"...[/i]
With the spider boss battle, I did this many, many times. Eventually I sent a message to the developer about it, figuring I must be missing something. Nope. Wasn't missing anything, except for maybe having alarm clocks for when my party members kept falling asleep. Except...the alarm clocks only work on enemies, not allies. I'm not sure if that's the only item error or not.
So what was so tough about this spider? 2X attacks. Often the spider would poison and put everyone to sleep. Then, if you were lucky, one of your party members would get woken up by a physical attack, though often the spider stuck to just constantly using a fire spell which would almost wipe us out completely each time. How did I eventually win? Persistence and luck.
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image4.png[/img]
[i]"Hey, I thought this was the non-smoking section!"[/i]
There was no true strategy involved in the end. I kept grinding, saving, dying, loading, and so on until I finally won...somehow. And of course, the battles don't get any easier as time goes on, so I can only imagine what the further on boss battles entail. Another thing that kinda threw me off was the art style. On the one hand, you've got a lot of nice, detailed models all drawn pretty much in the same style...then you've also got stills of 3D characters from Final Fantasy 9, characters that look like they came right out of a D&D scan, various smoothed sprites from SNES Final Fantasies, and so on.
This isn't so much a bad thing as it just comes off looking kinda awkward since not everything was done in the same art style. Another thing that's more distracting than anything is the status conditions. Okay, anytime you're afflicted with something, the animation has an associated sound that's loud enough that you can barely hear the music anymore and will continuously play until said status has been cleared.
[img]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll96/Zyria_photos/Image6.png[/img]
[i]Yeah, but we can't all have the Diet Coke. If you get that joke, congratulations! You're old![/i]
The good news is not all afflictions operate this way, but a lot do, and yes, they're quite distracting. The developer took a step in the right direction by utilizing a CTB (charge time bar) for the battles, meaning a character's speed determines who comes next in line. The problem is sometimes it can overlap with other characters or even enemies in a way that you're trying to input a command and they're suddenly attacking and killing said character.
Well, that's all I've got.
[b]Conclusion[/b]
[b]The Good[/b]
- Great mapping.
- Good selection of music.
- Refreshingly difficult.
- Good story.
- Well written dialogue.
[b]The Bad[/b]
- Boss battles are WAY unbalanced.
- Minigames are very trial and error with the ultimate penalty for failure.
- Art style is kinda all over the place. It's more awkward than "bad," really.
- Really needs minor tweaking as far as ensuring items work correctly and sounds removed from status effects.
- The CTB is a good idea, but doesn't work as well as it should. I'd honestly recommend replacing it with the FFX turn-based feature.
- You will never have your hand held. If you don't like difficult RPGs, you may want to give this one a miss.
[b]And The Grindy[/b]
Chaos Knights, to me, is kinda one of those "Be careful what you wish for" games. I get difficult to the point that I complain and pick at certain points that I normally wouldn't if they were separate. And yet, I can't really get mad at it because it's exactly what I want. Despite a few minor flaws that can easily be overlooked, the game is pretty brilliantly done and definitely worth your time if you like tougher RPGs.
Find it here: [url="http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=31882"]http://www.rpgrevolution.com/forums/index....showtopic=31882[/url]
Reviewer's Score: 8.5 / 10, Posted Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:58:42 -0400
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Game Details
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Developer:
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Zyria
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Platform:
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RPG Maker XP
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Genre:
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RPG
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Status:
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Complete |
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Last Updated:
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2009-06-12 |
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Views:
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3549 |
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Downloads:
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User Rating:
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  7 Vote(s) |
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