Chaos Rings Review: a role-playing Battle Royale on Windows Phone

Windows Telephone Role-playing fans welcomed Square-Enix'due south remake of the original Final Fantasy with open arms last year. At final, we had a lengthy and well-made RPG in the Xbox Windows Phone lineup. But the RPG genre has avant-garde dramatically since the kickoff Final Fantasy dawned on eight-bit Nintendo consoles. The remake'southward modest enhancements couldn't prevent the game from feeling dated.

Thankfully Square-Enix did non choose the equally dated (but still good) Final Fantasy 2 as its next Windows Phone RPG. Instead, the publisher followed up with a port of Chaos Rings. Originally released on iOS in 2022, Chaos Rings is an original Japanese RPG (JRPG) designed exclusively for mobile devices. How does it stack upwards confronting modern RPG standards? Read on to find out!

Pocket-sized size, big center

Whereas Final Fantasy understandably offered a threadbare narrative, Chaos Rings features a tale that is relatively small-scale in scale (graphic symbol-wise) and withal surprisingly circuitous and dramatic.

Developer Media Vision wisely understood that smartphone users play games in shorter and less predictable sessions than console gamers. Make a game besides long or put also many characters in it and a busy mobile player might not recollect a grapheme or plot detail the next time they showtime the game up.

As such, Chaos Rings consists of four shorter scenarios (and a cursory final scenario) that add up to tell a complete tale. Each scenario stars a team of two protagonists for a total of 8 playable characters. Factor in five NPCs and the unabridged cast only numbers 13 big!

Despite (or perhaps because of) its economical nature, Anarchy Rings' story all the same creates quite an touch on. In fact, I would contend that it carries more emotional resonance and coherence than Last Fantasy Thirteen, a much larger and college budgeted console game. The tighter focus and more than singular vision in Anarchy Rings make all the deviation.

Four teams united and divided by adversity

A stiff premise helps as well. Every bit Chaos Rings begins, 5 pairs of humans (each male partnered with a female person) awaken together in an unknown location following a mysterious eclipse. None of them knows how they got in that location (or do they?), but before long an ominous Agent informs them of their purpose: the couples must battle to the death in a tournament. The victors volition win eternal life.

Each of the playable scenarios follows one of the kidnapped duos as they participate in the tournament upon threat of expiry. If one team wins, that means the others all lose (their lives), which creates some highly compelling scenarios. You'll go from playing as i squad and sympathizing with their plight to the adjacent scenario in which your new team has to impale the last 1. Few games allow players to experience a conflict from so many sides, let alone one as harsh as this.

The danger in retelling i story in iv different means is that the audition could lose interest after the first telling. Indeed, after completing Escher the mercenary'southward scenario first, I didn't connect nearly besides with Eluca the purple executioner's plot. But so the third scenario involving Olgar (who knows something about the tournament) throws some serious twists into the mix. I didn't recollect Ayuta the stable paw's scenario could provide any surprises, but it does – as well equally tying upwards a lingering thread or ii.

It might even seem that some characters' personalities differ from scenario to scenario. Those discrepancies are only i of the mysteries wrapped around the tournament. All becomes clear by the fourth dimension the four scenarios wrap and the final i begins.

Presentation to lucifer

Nearly flawless presentation greatly aids that narrative in its bear on. Visually, Chaos Rings follows the lead of the seminal Terminal Fantasy 7. Characters are always polygonal, and much more than detailed than those of the seventh Final Fantasy. The environments they navigate are generally 2-dimensional, though in battle and cut scenes the backdrops become 3D.

Depression resolution textures and thin blackness borders on both sides of the screen (more discreet than Terminal Fantasy's unmarried larger border) are the merely existent flaws in Chaos Rings' visuals. Otherwise, information technology stands among the nearly beautiful games on Windows Phone – fifty-fifty compared confronting Windows Phone 8 titles.

Chaos Rings likewise sounds cracking, with a well-equanimous (though not iconic) orchestral soundtrack. Japanese vocalisation actors speak about eighty percentage of the dialogue, with the rest going unvoiced. English language voice interim would have been highly welcomed, but the Japanese seiyu deliver stronger performances than we're ever likely to hear from a Gameloft championship.

Gainsay

Battles in Anarchy Rings move at a brisk pace despite their plow-based nature. At the beginning of your turn, yous can select to straight the two protagonists individually or as a pair. Attacking every bit a pair is faster than not. Simply each enemy assault will target both party members when you perform a pair assail, which could testify dangerous to your party.

Both characters can also equip 3 genes collected from diverse types of enemies. A gene grants access to six skills when fully adult. Some skills are passive, like EXP boosts, while agile skills allow the political party to cast attack and defence force spells.

Most spells suit to one of three elements: fire, water, and gale (wind). Casting a spell temporarily imbues the thespian or enemy with that spell'south chemical element. The elements have a rock-paper-scissors relationship, so h2o attacks do extra damage against enemies who apply fire attacks, etc. You can typically ignore the chemical element arrangement in favor of concrete attacks during normal encounters. But smart chemical element use could mean the difference between victory and defeat during tougher boss clashes.

The game also has a "Break" system in which both sides compete for momentum against the other during battle. Breaks don't have much impact on the flow of battle though, and can be safely ignored.

Puzzle fever

Combat isn't the only thing that volition interrupt the exploration. Each of the five dungeons contains several puzzle rooms that players must solve in order to progress.  Puzzles come in several varieties, all involving manipulating blocks or candles. Virtually aren't too hard, though some users might get stumped and seek a guide for assistance.

I assume the developers included the puzzle rooms because puzzle games are so pop on mobile devices. The puzzles don't fit all that well with the balance of the game, but they don't harm it much either.

Save anywhere, why not

The start Final Fantasy betrayed its console origins in that it disallowed saving during certain hours-long dungeons. Thankfully Chaos Rings lets players salvage admittedly anywhere outside of story scenes or battle. With no unnecessary save file choice option, recording your progress is fast and easy. That's good because the game does crash occasionally. You lot'll want to salve often, just to be on the safe side.

Achievements

Near of Chaos Rings' Achievements come naturally from completing the various scenarios. The Achievement for reaching level 100 takes a little grinding, and the one for defeating 1,000 enemies requires a lot. It should take most 30 hours to get the full 200 GamerScore.

2 Achievements (one of which is secret) involve winning hidden dominate fights. The game hunts at those bosses, and so players might cease upwards discovering them on their own. Just we as well reveal their locations in our exclusive Accomplishment Guide.

Overall Impression

Chaos Rings stands tall as the most expensive Xbox game on Windows Phone. Japanese publishers like Square-Enix are infamous for pricing their mobile games college than average. Simply Chaos Rings justifies its price with an intriguing and mature story, nearly flawless presentation, and approximately thirty hours of gameplay (more if we count New Game+).

New releases of this quotient sell for xxx dollars or more than on portable consoles. Role-playing game fans, don't let the cost tag deter yous from owning one of the best mobile RPGs of all time. We all need to pony up and testify Foursquare-Enix our support. If this i sells well enough, mayhap they'll release the prequel Anarchy Rings Omega and Chaos Rings Two to Windows Phone besides.

• Chaos Rings – Windows Phone 7 or 8 (with 1GB of RAM) – 775 MB - $ix.99 – Store Link

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/chaos-rings-wp-review

Posted by: hodgsonthille.blogspot.com

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