Chaos Entropy

(Ported review from Elegy of Fate - the poor developer of this game made a very bad mistake by picking a predatory China publisher which managed to get itself banned and suffered very unfortunate consequences as a result. Please try the game and show him support, because I want DLC or a sequel.) This is a pretty interesting and affordable Chinese-jank indie game which is worth your while if you have the patience. I personally chose to buy it because I was looking for a RPG which was grindy like an idle game, but with the option for active gameplay and I am not at all disappointed. I'll get the negatives out of the way first: The game isn't pretty, the character models are downright ugly (not that you'll see them up close) and it uses rather a lot of AI art because this game was a one-man project. The translation isn't perfect, but it has a perfectly serviceable English translation (access it from the Settings in the lower left when you start the game). I'm trilingual, so I can say that the game doesn't lose much in that regard even if you chose to play it in Chinese. If you view the gameplay trailers, the game would probably come off as trying to be a MMO/World of Warcraft clone, but that would be doing it a disservice to the sheer amount of content the developer has tried to pack into it - which is extremely alarming for a $10 Indie game. The developer is obviously a gamer and has chosen a very very wide variety of games to piece together this game from: The main combat (World of Warcraft/FF12/Baldur's Gate/League of Legends/Guild Wars) - A 5-player (World of Warcraft) action based with a MOBA-based mouse control scheme (League of Legends). Right click to move and target, does not support WASD movement (sadly). You can play this like an auto battler with the option to pause and re-assign commands and use items at any time (Baldur's Gate). Has a plethora of interesting gear and abilities with neat interactions and all of these are upgradeable or craftable eventually. Dungeon Exploration (Voice of the Cards/Survival games): The entire dungeon-exploration game is told through cards being laid out on a board. Exploring it requires Shelter, a resource you mainly get from grinding a Fishing minigame, which has an Auto-Fish option now if you're worried about it. Running out of Shelter is not necessarily a bad thing, however. Exploration sequences (Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria/Bullet Hell/Gauntlet survival): This game is much more closely related to Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria than it is to World of Warcraft and it shows in the exploration sequences where you either gather resources for crafting while solving puzzles involving photons and crystals almost exactly like Silmeria. These are interspersed with other minigames such as Bullet Hell (Survive an onslaught of projectiles/lasers/AoEs) or Gauntlets (run through a huge hallway of traps). You're given a skill on a cooldown which gives temporary invincibility, but they're still challenging enough to be engaging. There's even a minigame involving racing an enemy faster than you which requires creative thinking. Triple Triad Card game (Final Fantasy 8) - Chinese people tend to love Final Fantasy 8 for some reason, so it's not THAT surprising that the entire Triple Triad minigame is in this game. Cards themselves can be equipped on your party members and give some minor buffs, so there is value into playing the minigame. Story (Valkyrie Profiles) - There is a somewhat interesting story behind this game and it takes far more from Valkyrie Profile than any other game. Your character is dead and has been resurrected by an "evil goddess" valkyrie who apparently isn't so evil after all. She is being chased by other goddesses trying to exterminate her and your mission is to find out what is going on, while recruiting other very dead and absolutely-not-Einherjar people to your cause. The game has a surprising amount of lore put into it if you're willing to take the time to read it and the world-building is actually decent. Ultimately, this is one of those games which looks horrible in the first 30 minutes, but just gets better and better the more time and patience you give to it and considering it's a very cheap game, I think it's absolutely worth the purchase if you're curious because even though it's very derivative, the sum of its parts adds up to something original and more creative than the hordes of copy-pasted Vampire-Survivor or Slay-the-Spire indie games with better graphics on the market. The sheer amount of content you can get for the cost is staggering.

*For a long time ive been looking for an auto battler party based management style game that has mmo elements and bosses for me this hits that style of game play quite well if your looking for the same i would definitely give it a try. *i have played the previous version and liked it a lot *from the previous version a lot of the ui has been improved some things are still jank and need improving, some ui isnt self explanatory or needs organising still *one issue i have found is melee classes seem to be to strong i would like to see more balance with other classes to match it idk if its just some skills that melee has but my tank (and fighter in previous play through) out damage 2 full damage ranger characters at the moment *I haven't beaten the game or gotten very far yet, and will give my feedback in the discord when ive done so in general ill give this game 7/10 ATM *things i hope to see in the game during my play through or ideas that i would like to see added in the future with this style of game: *some form of adventure mode - a big antagonist and his 3 commanders appeared after the campaign they have some form of effect that applies to the entire map, the bosses are overpowered at the time and you have lvl and gear up for this would require you to farm the map, unlock dungeons and 10 man raids to farm them get crazy loot, and try to take it on; something less story driven so satisfy that need to grind and strategise for (not saying the game currently isnt) but this would be amazing in my opinion. *big raids with unique mechanics that use 10 characters instead of the general 5 - for big loot to kill some big bad that happens after the campaign. *a big bad that requires a decent amount of grinding to reach/compete against, such as some god demon or something that you have to farm dungeons or raids *an infinite or close to infinite, tower mechanic with some sick items or characters *unique acquirable skills through some form of evolution/awakening (could be in the game already) *item effects such as on hits or threshold based or condition based (could be in the game already) *more skills and flashy ones *more voice acted skills *more classes assassin ect *sub classes like a merge of to classes with new skills like fighter and ranger would create a assassin archetype ranger and priest will make a bard, i know that this sorta becomes an issue with the farming for characters atm but if there is awakening or to be implemented awakening it could be added that way too

The graphic and UI are improve a lot from previous version. Character model no longer look like brick. Although, there are some bugs but it doesn't affect much gameplay. If you love auto-battler and grinding game, you should give it a try. Overal score: 8/10