iPad Chaos Rings - by Square Enix

The random encounters can be turned on or off at any time. You'll still have to end up doing a good amount of fighting to level up your character for later in the game, but if you don't feel like being bothered every few steps with a battle then you have the option to disable them. The story is fairly simple, so there's never a feeling that you've forgotten what's going on if you don't play for a few days. But that's not to say the story isn't good, actually quite the opposite. Each team's story feels really unique from one another, and the game feels different as you go back to play through with the other characters even though you're essentially playing through mostly the same dungeons.

You can choose what difficulty level you want the monsters each time you play or re-play a dungeon. If you want to be challenged, play with level 50-60+ monster spawns. Want to take it easy, start with them at level 20-30. You control whether or not the random encounters are pushovers or not.

I guess it's really a matter of taste, but I found the different scenery in the game to be breathtaking, and each location to be really interesting and distinct. The textures can get a little pixely during the 3D battles, but it looks far from bad and is actually really nice. The animations on the character and monster models are fantastic, and breathe life into them. The music is also very well done and I'd have to say that I was totally immersed in this game.

But you said you were leaving...

While you were playing this game 15 years ago and hating it, countless others were obsessively loving it. It's not that the elements of this game haven't been done before, but that they have been put together in a way that is totally conducive to mobile gaming. I'm far from a FF fanboy, the last one I truly played through that wasn't a re-release was FFVII. I could never get interested in any of them after that one. With that said, I'm hopelessly addicted to Chaos Rings. I think the makers of the game might have felt some of your bitterness, thinking that the traditional structure of an RPG just doesn't make for a very good experience while playing on the go. So what they've done is try to make the best RPG experience possible that is still totally suited for the iPhone. And they've definitely succeeded at that.

You may be surprised if you played this one, you might actually like it. You say you like TBS battles, and there's a heavy focus on them in this game and they're tons of fun. The story is easy to follow and interface is simple and unobtrusive. You definitely don't get bogged down by endless menu screens. Just saying don't be so quick to lump this in with all the other FF games that you didn't enjoy. Just cause it looks like a chocobo and walks like a chocobo, doesn't make it a chocobo.

It takes roughly 8 hours to complete the game the first time. Subsequent playthroughs with the other teams seem to go a bit faster, but should still take several hours. Plus you can restart with a team you've already beaten the game with and retain a lot of your equipment and XP. Not to mention you can extend the play time as much as you want by grinding in the dungeons you've already beat. I don't think there's any worry about a lack of content in this game, as long as you don't foresee yourself getting burnt out on turn based battling.

 

Read the sentence that follows the one with "8 hours to complete."

BTW, thanks Boardumb for the lucid and detailed review/overview.

 

Some of the puzzles do involve sliding boxes. There's different type puzzles depending on the dungeon and the team you're using. They're all logic type puzzles, some are sorta like sokoban and some are kinda like blackout (i.e. getting all candles lit using a limited amount of turns).

Occasionally I'd get stuck on one of them, but overall the puzzles aren't too difficult and I appreciate the shift in thinking they provide.

 

Haha, ok the pressure's on me. Like I've said, I've really wanted to like a lot of RPG's over the years, but I just don't get into them. I think my life just doesn't allow me to play ultra complex 80+ hour games anymore, which is why I love to game on my iPod so much. This game was made for someone like me.

I'd almost call it an "arcade RPG". It doesn't require huge time investments. The core fun parts from RPG's, battling and building your character, are the main focus. It has a lot of great story but it's not necessary to pay attention to any of it to play the game. I can't explain it, it's just damn fun. It keeps everything so simple, and yet still has a lot of depth.

If the pleasure you derive from an RPG stems from intricate storylines, huge sprawling lands, endless equipment, guilds, buying property, combining items and alchemy, etc. then this isn't the game for you.