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Capcom has once again ported a lackluster console game to the PC. While we may never know why the company chooses not to port its better games, we do know that Chaos Legion is still a repetitive and bland hack-and-slash game on the PC, just as it was on the PlayStation 2.
Many of Chaos Legion's environments look drab and uninteresting.
In the game, you play as a knight named Sieg Warheit, who is tasked with stopping a man named Victor Delacroix from collecting powerful magical artifacts. The two men and these artifacts are linked by past events; Sieg killed Delacroix's lover, and now Delacroix is hoping to use these magical artifacts to bring his beloved back to life, even if it means causing wanton destruction along the way. The game uses cutscenes between missions to advance the plot, but the silly dialogue and convoluted scene direction make following the story more difficult than it needs to be. The cutscenes include decent but unremarkable voice acting, much like the music and other sound in the game.
Unfortunately, Chaos Legion includes many of the same graphical blemishes that marred the experience on the PS2. While the actual character models for Sieg and the monsters are reasonably detailed, the combat animation suffers from some jerkiness, which makes Sieg appear to warp from one strike to the next. Sieg's walking animation is even worse--he appears to moonwalk or glide across the ground rather than take deliberate steps. Other technical issues include heavy fogging that results in noticeable draw-in and mip-mapping problems that create unintentional blurriness and distortion on textured surfaces a short distance away from your point of view. The game also fails from an artistic standpoint--while it attempts to mimic the dark, gothic look of Devil May Cry with its character designs, the environments end up feeling rather drab and uninteresting, with very limited detail.
The gameplay is best described as hack-and-slash, with some basic strategic elements included. Sieg's basic attack is with his sword--using a single button, you can easily execute slashes and strikes that chain together in combination. As you defeat level bosses, you gain crests that you can equip to give you special, more powerful attacks. More importantly, these crests allow you to summon "legions," which are monsters that have their own unique attacks and abilities. You can manage Sieg and the legions well enough using the keyboard, but those with dual-analog controllers will have an easier time playing because the controller makes it easier to manage the camera.
