Gameplay: [8] Graphics: [8] Audio: [9] Replay: [9] Overall: [9.5]


Having been let down by Venus & Braves recently, I was really looking forward to Disgaea, which I tried to pick up in February, only to find they were all sold out everywhere in Akihabara. On top of that, Ebgames had an incorrect release date on their site (which they have now changed to reflect a different, yet still incorrect date.) and so I thought it was coming here 2 weeks ago. Instead, it's going to be coming out here during September.

So, since the US is bereft of a strat-RPG, I have to set my sights on Japan for a good one, because apparently, the normal gamer here is incapable of handling such a long game, and I need to get a life, according to one of our recent "Comments of the Weak". After checking Famitsu.com's top 30, and putting the smack down on a bunch of price fixing bastards on the Ebay, I picked up an import copy of Idea Factory's "Generation of Chaos III".

I had thought this was a sequel to a strategy RPG I'd seen my friend playing back in the dorms when we were in college, but either I was wrong, or the game got renamed in English, and it bears no resemblance to the title of the Playstation 2 title. In any case, boasting great 2D graphics, and an a very nice intro, would this game erase the bad taste left by Namco's awful title Venus & Braves?

First Impressions

I'm a sucker for a well put together intro. This is a double-edged sword. If you have something pretty cool for an intro, and then a game that doesn't live up (*cough*Evil Zone*cough*) I hate the game even more. But, Idea Factory had the formula for a tight intro down to the letter. Really nice 2D, and a killer, catchy opening theme song. The single, "Wing", by Sae really got me amped on the game and I was ready to just dive in.

Plot

I don't have too much of a clue as to what's going on in GoC3. You start up the game, and within your first real mission you re-visit the past events, the death of a close friend in battle, and the reuniting with your brother. Then the main character goes to fend off a tutorial threat, and his dad dies. (I don't read much Japanese, and I saw this coming miles away.) It's the year 130, which, I think references the number of years since some catastrophic event/war befell the realm (called "Never Land").

In any case, the main character (who's name is "Alfred", I think, but I just named him "Mr. Tea".) is under threat of assassination, and with the death of his father, other surrounding nation sieze the opportunity and descend upon your kingdom. Seeing as, how through the course of the game you will conquer them, one could say that amounted to a poor tactical decision on their part.

So, you and your brother will field troops in Strategic combat, and a group of 4 in an RPG mode in order to try and reunite the realm under your banner, and try and eliminate the people trying to eliminate you. Simple, but effective. (At least as far as I could understand it. This whole thing could involve space aliens who took over the body of humans, and I'd probably never know.)

There's also an anime based off of the game out, so there's probably a much deeper explanation of the plot present in some form or another.

Gameplay - Strategy

If you don't understand Japanese, you'll probably want to stay away from this. I don't think too many people have the same level of patience I do when it comes to trying to extract fun from something that's in a language that you don't fully understand. Hell, I watch movies in Chinese without really understanding Cantonese or Mandarin...why not games in Japanese?

In Strategy Mode there's a menu of like 12 different commands, and most of them have submenus. If you're not careful, you'll end up disbanding armies, firing generals, marrying people to each other, putting your best warriors in charge of staying at home and building enhancements to fortresses, and trying to buy the affection of your subrdinates with cheap trinkets...I mean, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! It could end up turning out that badly for you.

Anyway, if you can get past that, what you find is a incredible amount of depth at your button pushing figertips. In Strategy Mode, you'll have a group of up to four generals fighting in an army. If you're defending, you can have a group of up to 4 armies defending the castle.

Each general brings with them a different type of troop unit. Some have standard footmen, others employ orcs, still others...big dinosaur things. Naturally...the big dinosaur things kind of rock everything else. You can see your troops, and a random number of the enemy units. If your generals have an advantage in attack due to the weather conditions and other random factors, you might want to order them to charge. If you're going up against a superior force, you may want to try and stall the enemy so your generals have a chance to charge up their special abilities.

If you've really got your back against a wall, you can have your generals try and suicide charge to break through to their leader, and hope they make it through without too much damage and have a higher strength than the enemy.

If you have unique characters, you'll have special attacks with them in the Simulation Mode, where they'll have a little movie and unleash a bigger than average attack. If you find that character's pair, you can put them together in the same army, and unleash a really devastating team up attack.

Depending on how well the fortifications of the city are built up, you could be facing anywhere from 1-4 armies. To lessen the amount of troops you're going to be encountering, you can have your general fire off offensive spells at the enemy city to hit their armies before you guys take the field. This is a big reason to pick up a bunch of extra generals, although for the most part, they are kind of useless...but at least you can get an attack in before the battle starts without ever having to have them do anything. Fighting 4 generals with divisions of 13 is a lot easier than trying to figure out how to take care of them when they're sporting their max troop size of 49.

Casting a spell essentially "taps" one of your generals, and the only thing they're allowed to do for the new few turns is move and fight. You can't use them to build, etc. Likewise, if they're building, they can't do anything else either...no casting, no joing an army, and so on and so forth.

After you've defeated the enemy, and survived all the attacks that come against your property this turn, you'll get to a phase where you have to decide what to do with the enemy generals you've captured this turn. If the enemy general had a low loyalty towards their previous king, they'll ask if they can join up with your army. If you turn them down, you then come to the option you get if the enemy refuses to submit to your rule. You can either let them go, or kill them.

Killing them ensures that you won't have to face them in battle anytime soon (There are different incarnations of the same generals with identical stats, you so may face someone equally annoying down the road.) but also eliminates the possibility of them coming around and joining up with you later, which frequently happens. Killing them will make your immediate battles much easier, but maybe you need that extra spell to launch at a city in the next chapter, or need their muscle in a particularly difficult battle...decisions, decisions.

Also since different combinations of people will gain you their special moves and special team-up moves, you may want to reconsider killing off the strong enemy generals just because they didn't join you on the first offer. You may meet up with them again in a dungeon, and if you didn't kill their friends, they're much more likely to be amicable when you meet them again.

On the World Map/Orders Screen you can do things like move your armies from town to town, and have them enter towns to purchase weapons and armor for your units. You can also head off into RPG mode dungeons in certain towns. Gameplay for that will be discussed in the "Gameplay - RPG" section. You can also do things like assign generals to be in charge of the cities that are under your rule. Once you have a steward in charge of a town, you can do things like expand the fortress, expand the number of businesses there, or reinforce the political stability of the town so it's fervently loyal to you.

Even if characters are useless in battle, the build phase may be another way in which they shine. Their stats may not seem to lend to them having a high per month salary, but sometimes they can build things awful quick. Once a city starts getting some real businesses in it, you'll be rolling in cash. I'm in Chapter 5, and I've got something like 8 million gold, this all due to investing in the rebuilding of my towns. Plus you can always use them to form an Army of One, and roll around to the towns and provinces you own, picking up equipment for the troops.

In addition to entrusting your cities to generals, you can also offer them gifts to keep their loyalty high, marry them, become friends, and scout out the opposing forces. This game probably has the most options and depth of anything I've played this year, and this includes Master of Orion III and Galactic Civilizations.

Gameplay - RPG

Yes...even with all the depth in the Strategy part of the game, there's a whole other RPG section, although it's mainly just for increasing your characters' stats. In the RPG section you'll have the 4 characters up on the right. In order to give each of them a command, you hold the button that corresponds to their position. (They're lined up exactly in the formation of buttons on the PS2 controller.) Your characters will have various sequences that you can enter in for them to do different things. Hitting O will cause your character to just go with a basic slash, while holding down O may cause them to fire off an area effect ice or fire spell.

Your character will have a certain amount of action points built up by waiting for their turn counter to count up. The max is 6, at which point your character can execute a pretty damn powerful special move. At 4 action points your character can launch off their attack the they'd build up in the Simulation Mode. Unique characters will usually have a time pop up, and a combo counter appear to show you how many hits you've done in the alloted time. My record so far is 82...man did my fingers burn after that...

The different weapons you equip for your characters will show up on their 2D sprites, and they all look pretty cool. After a certain number of successful actions have been performed, your character will get a little "Status Up" above their head. That means they've levelled during the fight. If the message appeared after a physical attack, it'll raise their Strength and Defense by 1. If it was during a Magic attack, Intelligence and Mental will go up 1.

In the stats area there's a number that represents the "potential" your character can tap into, usually starting from from 30-50. Every point of increase takes away from this total, and after a certain point, you'll be out of potential and can't raise your stats for that character anymore. Every battle will open with the leading characters in each group to launch a volley of smack at each other. A lot of bitter feelings between people fighting with swords and sorcery for some reason.

There are three different "games" bundled into Generation of Chaos III. The main mode, another mode called "Kingdom of Chaos" and a third called "Spectral Tower". Kingdom of Chaos is a mode where your actions in the Simulation game, as far I can tell will determine part of the backstory, and allow you to have allies in the main game. I didn't really understand too much, so I went it alone, and destroyed everyone.

Spectral Tower is a 100 floor dungeon. (Even longer than the one I had to test in FREAKING Parasite Eve. I hate the Chrysler Building now.) Your character's stats in the main game carry on to this one. When you start the main game, you can create a bunch of characters. You edit their stats (and they're some of the best and cheapest characters you'll pick up in the main campaign.) in the main storyline, and then you can use them in Spectral Tower. I think this mode is more fluff than anything...but it's here, and it ties in with the main game, which I think is cooler still. Adds to the replay value a bit.

Graphics

The graphics for this game are excellent. There's no 3D anywhere, everything's done in 2D sprites, but all of it is done really, really, well. Just shows that you don't need to drop $2 million on an engine to make a game that's worth playing. All the enemy generals you run into have a really really nice full screen picture in their "character sheet" section. Someone spent a lot of time drawing all these people, and they look really, really nice.

Effects in battle are pretty weak, which can be attributed to the fact that there isn't anything really flashy. Just not enough color or complexity in the battle effects to really have anything that looks all that cool. In that, sense I'm disappointed, but since there's so much richness in the rest of the art, I guess I'll let it slide...but that doesn't mean I won't dock the score.

Audio

The audio mostly rides on the strength of the main theme song. This is also the second game I' ve played recently where there's a TON of voiceover at the beginning of the game, and then it is completely absent from the majority of the game. I don't know what to make of that. There's also a point at the beginning of the game where two people are talking, and it's totally obvious that it's the same voice actor doing both characters. I wonder if they just told him to ahve a conversation with himself and recorded it that way.

Battle effects sound pretty cool...sword clashes, marching footsteps. All that good stuff. The ambient background music doesn't impress nearly as much as the opening theme did...espeically the boss fights. That music sounds exactly like someone played it one note at a time and then sped it up to make it sound like a coherent tune...only they sped it up to much, and it sounds stupid.

I also have to say, the ending theme isn't nearly as well polished as the opening theme. Just doesn't do it for me at all.

Hiccups

With the game's engine as minimal as it is, I still don't understand why the load times are so freaking long. If you skip one of the unique characters' animation in simulation mode, it takes nearly ten seconds (between 9 and 10...I didn't have a stop watch, but I counted it twice as more than 9.) after skipping it to have the attack animation go. It's almost like it still plays the animation, it just doesn't let you see it.

While we're on the topic of animation...where is it?! All of the scenes, while nicely done, have very, vey little animation in them. The opening intro is all still pictures and a moving background. It's ok at the beginning, and then you see the same thing again in all the Simulation Mode attacks, and it feels really skimped on after a while.

Aside from the load times in battle the general responsiveness of the menu system feels sluggish. There are certain point when going from one menu to another on the same menu and screen looks like it causes the game to redraw the entire screen.

Also annoying is the fact that some character have more "potential" than the highest stats in the game will allow them to make use of. It's like in Suikoden III when you end up with WAYYY more skills points than you can use. What's the point? That's just being too lazy to balance the game or come up with new stats. I hate that. You put all these little details into the game, and then just let stuff like that slip through. Brilliant.

Overall

Great game. This game sets the bar that the other Tactics games coming out this year are going to have to beat to be remembered as being truly great in my book. I would enjoy the game more if it offered a little bit more complexity in battle...say letting me upgrade my troops, and all the things I mention in the hiccups area. So, if you're willing to dig into a bit of Japanese in order to find a good game, this should more than satiate you while you're waiting for the tidal wave of tactical games coming this September.

You're going to need a Japanese or modded PS2 to play this one, so it might be worth your time to send off a little email to the folks at Idea Factory and ask them to put some time into translating this one.