We haven’t been fans of serious gaming on the iPhone — first of all, the longevity of the battery power literally sucks; secondly, the screen is too small; and the third major point being that the lack of any physical controller options throw any serious action gaming out the window. Sure we have played games on the iPhone, we’ve done that a lot, we have even developed games on it – but we went for that magic 5 min that is when we are shivering from the cold emanating from the toilet seat our bottoms been attached to while we sneaked those magical few minutes into our work schedule at the stall inside the company bathroom while we giggled to ourselves incessantly avoiding the micromanaging gazes of our office managers. Then the iPad came along — we weren’t big fans of it because of its high price point. But we got our hand on one (through actual legal means) and suddenly we reached an epiphany. It is the start of a glorious new age.
Well there still isn’t anything overly serious and hardcore on the iPad — there’s Sam and Max: Penal Zone, which you can get a superior version on any other platform of choice; there’s Warp Gate — which is a serious game in disguise — but Privateer it is not — heck you can’t even control your ship during a dogfight — there IS no dogfight — they’re more like cat fights. There’s Babylonian Twins, a supposed 16 year game from Iraq in the making — but didn’t we play this before — the same old cooperative puzzle solving like Lost Vikings? Something you would rather play with a gamepad in your hand.
But, Square’s Chaos Rings arrived, though we didn’t play the iPad version (it’s not out yet), we can guarantee you iPad freaks out there, that the game looks gorgeous on the iPad with the x2 screen size option, and you would want to play this on the iPad — for the battery would last you longer than you playing the game from start to finish, hay it might even outlive your Grandma; much more comfortable than on the small screen of the iPhone and having to charge it every 2 hours or so and fearing that it might explode playing it while charging. The $13 dollar price tag may be daunting to iPhone users since they are spoiled by all the 99 cents crappy games out there, but for a Square high production this is really a steal (it’s almost like they are giving it to you for free), and any hardcore gamer would concur. Chaos Rings can easily pass for a high quality PSP and DS title which would easily have cost at least 35 bucks or above.
We are not here to pimp Chaos Rings even though we have done anything but (Square didn’t pay us although we wished they did). Sure if you are looking for a real hardcore experience, Chaos Rings is not it (we suggest visiting porn sites). It’s not Final Fantasy XIII — it’s more like Final Fantasy XIII just the part after you finish the game. Chaos Rings’ concentration is on the action (and ironically there IS no action), it’s a big dungeon crawler with solely turn-based combat, with a few twists to the turn-based formula which we don’t really need to talk about — and you can turn off random combat if you feel like it, thank God for that. There is no masterpiece of a plot here, so don’t let any reviewers lie to you that this game has an awesome story, they are lying bastards who are paid to write and only played the game for 2 hours. A single playthrough will last you 6 to 8 hours and there is some minimal dialogue resembling a structured storyline to keep you going — and you can revisit the game after you finish, to access alternate endings and find out the story of the other characters. For us playing the game once is enough. We like it but we ARE not that desperate to go through all 4 pairs of characters. The characters do grow, and they grow on you; the plot does twist, in its non-grandiose way. But the gorgeous graphics and the light-hearted gameplay (the game IS damn easy and grinding is a breeze if you can’t defeat foes at certain plot points) will keep you going. The polygon graphics is reminiscence of a late-stage PSX or an early PS2 era game, and it looks great on the iPad (who would have known even your first generation iPhone has the horsepower to boot up this game), the folks at Square and Media Vision must have pulled some hours studying the iPhone SDK. The hand-painted portraits reminds me of Valkyrie Profile on the DS, which is an awesome thing to be reminded of; and the highest point of the game is going to be the music — the hauntingly orchestra soundtrack is simply — epic.
Chaos Rings isn’t the best game ever, not by a long shot. In the era that conventional jRPG is obviously struggling with its last breath, Chaos Rings is like godsend — it IS the most epic game you can play on your iPad / iPhone right at this moment, and that is a great start of something great happening on the horizon — that your mobile device will maybe soon 1 day make your DS and PSP obsolete.
This IPad thing is certainly looking very good… so many specs and so on… however this time I go through this, I quickly do not like it in almost any respect. I am a very pleased owner of an iTouch (2nd Generation) and I think this particular thing has upgraded a great deal in comparison with the earliest generation. And thus it will always be far better, but don’t forget that … Do not ever purchase a product from Apple if it’s only 1 year on the market, they are going to bolster it nonetheless they normally change step-by-step to acheive increase revenues utilizing their company products… Exceptionally sensible people :-)