I keep trying to play through this game and keep getting pulled away. In any case, I'm on stage 4 now and have come to the conclusion that Gungrave is far and away the superior pure action title, but that's not to say Chaos Legion doesn't have its strong points. Unfortunately, it also has a couple strong bad points that are beginning to manifest themselves.
First problem I noticed: Just like Dante, if Seig starts a combo you lose almost complete control over him and he'll just start charging forward with no ability to dodge or move. If there was some way to cancel a combo mid-way through (maybe have circle as a double usage button in that it would halt his movements immediately like a RC from GGXX, perhaps at the cost of some Soul Power or something) it'd be fine, but 90% of my hits are because Seig is stuck in performing a combo and can't move or turn enough. Like I said about DMC, he really needs to be able to redirect his attacks mid-combo, as back attacks can be killer since there's no way to stop them while fighting.
Second: Like many action games, they seem to think that placing idiotic objectives and changing the pace from the pure simplicity and action into unnessecary goals will somehow make the game better. It doesn't. It rarely has and it's a tactic that fails more often then it works, turning many action games that started off excellently into pathetic drivel that I couldn't stand to finish. Why the target enemies? Why the lack of droves of enemies swarming across the landscape? Why the floating enemies that take so to kill even after every other enemy around has been destroyed, turning into a waste of time?
It starts off with tons of enemies pouring in from everywhere and ripping through the masses utilizing crowd control and brute strength, but has so far turned into "ignore everyone, go for the target enemy" and there aren't even masses of enemies to plow through to get to the target enemy. If they had placed a single target enemy and fifty enemies between the two of you, that would be sweet as hell. But to have five guys milling around and some cannons placed around for the sole purpose of being annoying? No.
Now, that's not to say I haven't had fun with it. I had a blast with those early stages and it was good stuff, but the direction the level design is going isn't making me happy. If you're going to make a pure action game, MAKE A PURE ACTION GAME. Leave any sort of bullshit objectives that are not Kill Everyone or Reach The End Of The Level out of it. And for Gods sake, make sure we have something to kill and plenty of it. Getting through the beginning of stage 4 only requires killing about ten out of the eighty or so enemies eventually present. Why is that the best option? Remove the point of the game and the game thus becomes pointless.
I have some other bitches about it (pointless combo rankings, complete lack of flow, etc.) but I'll hold off for now. One question: What are those blue items there for and how do you use them? I accidently skipped the tutorial section for that (as they kept popping up while I was killing things, and the Skip Screen button is the same as attack, so the screen was gone before I realized it was popping up) and have no clue how or where to use them.
