Chaos in the Old World Review

Worlds of Chaos: Invasion is a single player, party based open-world tactical RPG with a strong emphasis on exploration, tactical real-time-with-pause combats and party creation. It has a deep, fun and intense combat system that will challenge you to your limits, and will make clever decisions count.

ABOUT THIS GAME

You build a party of 5 characters that are exactly what you want : no classes or choice restrictions. Creating good and balanced characters with the right combinations of stats, skills, equipments, items and magic abilities, is what matters the most. In this game, a huge importance has been put on making every choice equal in power. 

What is important for a good party is not choosing the best skills, but an efficient combination of choices that work well together. And that is completely up to you, the player, to figure out. Your combinations will be unique to your style and choices.

Battles are fast-paced, and you will need to take a lot of decisions, each of which will help you overcome the difficult foes that you encounter. Choosing which abilities to use, when and how to use them, choosing the right positioning of your warriors and the right targets for each of them, knowing which equipments and consumables to use and when, are what will bring you victory.

Key Features :

Single player tactical RPG where you control a party of 5 characters that you create with no class restriction, they are how you decide, completely.

Very intense real-time-with-pause tactical gameplay that keeps you on your toes.

Deep combat system that rewards clever party organization and statistical skill outside of combat, and smart tactical thinking inside combat.

Injuries system that weakens enemies (and party characters) that have been hit, so focusing attacks on one enemy is unnecessary and often a bad idea. Injuring many enemies to make them weaker by taking opportunities in combat and using each of your characters at their best is way better.

Each situation, each combat demands different strategies. There are no tactics that will work every time, adaptability is crucial. Check combat video to see this in action.

No dead time in this game unlike most rpgs : corpses are auto-looted, you can fast-travel to explored places at any time, time consuming parts are taken off this game to keep the most interesting ones : exploration, combats, fast loots, fast shopping, fast and simple party management.

(Early access) The game now has 21 hours of contents and can now be played from the start to the end. It will still be improved but at least you have a complete game.

Gameplay

The game has a basic good vs. evil plot. This game is also one of the few games for the Family Computer that contains a day/night cycle.[citation needed] Players are allowed to assign the initial available character's gender and job class, which will affect the equipment and spells they can learn and acquire. Throughout the game other characters can be acquired and added to the party. 

There are guilds in the various towns where the player can assign characters in the party to perform 'jobs'. When a character is performing a 'job', they are not available for use in the player's party until the job has been completed. After the job is finished, the character will return to the player's party and will receive extra money and/or equipment.

A formation and tactic can be picked at the onset of the battle, but from there the battle is handled automatically, and items/spells/attacks are used when needed as determined by the computer.

Plot

The king's daughter is sick while the kingdom is occupied by monsters. The king needs the player, who happens to be the offspring of the great warrior Mars, to investigate the cause of these incidents. The dark forces seek to conquer the world and the player must prevent it.

How to Play:

The game is played over a series of rounds (about 7 or so), each with a number of phases to play through. The first step though, is choosing which god you will be. One thing that this game gets right is that each god is very unique and has his own play style. The 4 choices are:

Slaanesh, the god of sin. Choose him if you like corrupting the rulers of the world to do your bidding.

Tzeentch, the god of magic. Choose him if you like casting a lot of spells.

Nurgle, the god of disease. Choose him if you’d like to corrupt the land by spreading your plague.

Khorne, The god of battle. Choose him if you like straight up killing things.

Each of these 4 gods has their own unique deck of spell cards, upgrades, followers and special abilities. You actually have to tailor your strategy based on which god you are playing. If you want to rule the world with combat, then Nurgle is probably a bad choice. But back to the game play.

Each turn starts out with the Chaos powers affecting the world. You draw from a deck that decides what events are happening this turn. Perhaps heroes are showing up to make your life harder, or you might have certain regions avoiding battle. You are drawing one card each round from a stack of about 20, so you never know what is going to happen each game.

After chaos has had it’s turn

It’s time for the players to go. Each player has an amount of power points that they can use each turn to summon troops to battle or cast spells. Once you are out of points for the turn, you are done for the round. The key here is deciding how best to use your points. Do you want to cast that spell in a specific region, or send another cultist in to spread your corruption? These decisions are the heart of the game.

After all players have spent their points it’s time to crush your enemies in battle. Battles are very Risk like. Roll dice (d6), certain numbers are hit the enemy. Most players should feel right at home with combat resolution. The board is separated into a number of regions that makes it easy to keep track of separate battles.

After the battles are completed its time to spread your corruption. This is based on how many cultists, and only cultists, you have in a region. The key is, a cultists adds nothing to a battle during a fight (they are weak). However, cultists are the only ones that can spread your influence. So you have to keep them alive, but you can’t leave them alone. 

Each region gets a corruption token for each cultist you have in there. Once a region has been corrupted enough, it’s ruined. A ruined region will score a lot of victory points for the ruiners but it becomes useless for the rest of the game.

Chaos in the Old World is a bit unique in that it can end in 1 of 4 different ways. Upgrade your god to his final power stage (represented by a dial), score at least 50 victory points, ruin 5 regions,  or draw the last chaos of the 7 chaos cards (in this case, the game wins and all players lose) are the ways this game can end.