I’ve been saying “Dear Goddy McJesus” a lot when frustrated. I’ve only said it once so far today, though, so I think I’m finally, seriously relaxing here!!1 I’ve replaced my PS2 controllers with wireless ones and find myself asking myself why the hell I didn’t do so sooner. Eager to try out the niche SRPG Chaos Wars, I threw the game in right away rather than unsealing the Pelicans from their IMPENETRABLE CLAMSHELL PRISONS and proceeded to entangle, knock things over, and run my office chair over the cord in the space of about twenty minutes. Needless to say, what followed was, and probably will be the only time that I ‘gleefully’ tore open a plastic electronics package.

As mentioned before, as I’m frankly a complete sucker for strategy RPG’s and inscrutable niche garbage, I picked up the Gamestop/EBGames ExXxCLUSIVE! title Chaos Wars, which is one of those massive crossover gimmick games that we only see once in a blue moon here. I was a little let down that it doesn’t play much like a more ‘moe’ Super Robot Wars, but that’s just speculating off the title so I won’t hold it against it. What puzzles me is that the maps are pretty obviously tile-based, yet a ‘movement ring’ a la Makai Kingdom is used instead of grid movement. In a nutshell, this means that youre given full freedom of movement that you will be using to place units within an unseen-but-largely-implied grid. You’ll even still be making the classic Disgaea ‘T’ formation for comboing since the game won’t allow players to crowd together by much.

If you get it, don’t play it in English. Seriously. I haven’t heard this caliber of voice acting since, well… probably when Manga Video was a major competitor in the anime dubbing industry. Or that black market, English dubbed Love Hina porno. (Shut up, I can’t be the only one who’s seen that.) I’m holding off my ultimate verdict on the game since I’ve barely started and I at least want to see how Beyond the Grave and Mika stack up against the cast of Spectral Force and Thousand Arms.