chaos wars

[Miramon]

I picked up Chaos Wars for the hell of it, not expecting much, which is just as well. Basically you collect kawaii versions of random JRPG characters from various games (only one of which I am familiar with, shadow heart) and play a dumbed-down sprite tactical combat game like one of the nippon ichi games, say phantom brave, except much simpler, and with even worse graphics.

There may be a deep complex game in there someplace, but I've played for a couple of hours and not found it anywhere yet....

The localization is very weak -- some of the worst voice acting ever, with deliberately childlike voices for the cuteified characters, and the various voiced "sayings" of the characters when they do things weren't translated, not that it matters much -- stuff like "nani?" and so on.

There is a "help" bookcase that evidently was never tested by QA, because it displays dark gray text on a dark picture background making the help system completely impossible to read.

I pity the reviewer required to finish this game, though I doubt there are any. I'd rather just replay one of the shadow heart games three times than finish this one once....

[flyinj]

I picked up Chaos Wars for the hell of it, not expecting much, which is just as well. Basically you collect kawaii versions of random JRPG characters from various games (only one of which I am familiar with, shadow heart) and play a dumbed-down sprite tactical combat game like one of the nippon ichi games, say phantom brave, except much simpler, and with even worse graphics.

There may be a deep complex game in there someplace, but I've played for a couple of hours and not found it anywhere yet....

The localization is very weak -- some of the worst voice acting ever, with deliberately childlike voices for the cuteified characters, and the various voiced "sayings" of the characters when they do things weren't translated, not that it matters much -- stuff like "nani?" and so on.

There is a "help" bookcase that evidently was never tested by QA, because it displays dark gray text on a dark picture background making the help system completely impossible to read.

I pity the reviewer required to finish this game, though I doubt there are any. I'd rather just replay one of the shadow heart games three times than finish this one once....

Someone looked at the credits, and figured out that the CEO of the localization company and his immediate family were the ones who did the voices for the game.

It seems to be going down in history as the low water mark for horrible localization... lots of forums and blogs are buzzing about how terrible it is.

[BlueJackalope]

I thought this was going to be about Chaos Overlords.

[MattKeil]

Here's what supposedly happened with Chaos Wars. The localization company wanted to release it with just Japanese voices, but Sony wouldn't allow it. So to appease and test Sony, they recorded the worst imaginable English VO and submitted it. Sony approved. So it got released with awful English voices and the company itself encourages players to use the Japanese audio.

Hooray for arbitrary corporate policies.

[henryc]

Why wouldn't Sony allow it? Yakuza 2 is going to be subtitled with Japanese dialogue.

And OP, when you say you aren't expecting much, you're not supposed to actually follow through with that thought. I can't be the only one who was hoping for a "despite the bad reviews, this game rocks".

[Miramon]

And OP, when you say you aren't expecting much, you're not supposed to actually follow through with that thought. I can't be the only one who was hoping for a "despite the bad reviews, this game rocks".
I may have nursed that secret hope, but I have plausible deniability. And it really does suck.

[Zylon]

Darn, I thought this was about the sequel to Spheres of Chaos.

[MattKeil]

Why wouldn't Sony allow it? Yakuza 2 is going to be subtitled with Japanese dialogue.

Sony requires all games with voice acting to have English voices. If Yakuza 2 is getting around that, I imagine it's due to Sega having more clout than no-name indie localizer company. I do know that at least two of the producers of the US version of Yakuza 1 wanted to keep it Japanese only, but Sony's policy forced them to do an English dub.

[malkav11]

Sony's policy is really fucking stupid. But I guess there's nothing new there.

[Miramon]

If the localization company really decided to deliberately publish a crappy game as a protest, they should have remembered they are selling this POS to the public, as it is after all a commercial product.... and that just means that I won't buy any more games from, uh, whoever is responsible for the US distribution of this junk. I'm also tempted to blame Idea Factory, but I suppose they just signed some contract and turned the game over to whichever US firm it was (though it would have been a weak game with the best localization in the world).

Uh... hm, localizer and I guess distributor (?) is O3 Entertainment, never heard of them before. I suppose I'm not likely to see them credited with any major game anyhow, but now I'll look to avoid them, so that's a big "well done" to them.

If I feel the need for console strategy, I'll just play La Pucelle again or something....

Late addition: Haha, I just went to the O3 forums. The "Chaos Wars" forum has 2 posts, both porn ads. This is the smell of quality.