A Splendid Little Holy War: Let's play Chaos World!

WAIT COME BACK


Chaos World was released on the Famicom in 1991 by Natsume. Prolific translation patcher AGTP released an English translation for it 2001, and here I am in 2011 doing a let's play of it. Crazy stuff, huh? The translation isn't stellar. It's certainly not as awful as Natsume's own efforts at localization, but there are plenty of technical issues plaguing it on top of a fairly dry script.

Loosely translated from the manual:

In the old days, all of the cities spread across the six continents were part of one great kingdom. The people knew a prosperity that remains unmatched even today.

However, nothing lasts forever. A dispute over the rightful heir to the throne erupted into a full blown civil war. When the conflicted ended, the world had been divided into five territories, three of which established themselves as the dominate forces in the world: Rodetia in the south, Ruval in the northwest and Ryuita in the northeast. The land between the three countries, a continent covered by an immense forest, was designated as a sacred area to prevent acts of aggression.

Hundreds of years have passed since then. The people have forgotten past transgressions: What was once an uneasy peace has become genuine.

But nothing lasts forever.

One day, an old man came to the Kingdom of Rodetia. In the center of town, he held forth a sparkling crystal ball and spoke these words:
"I have witnessed the past thousand years, and I have witnessed the distant future. Darkness will spread across this land, and out of that darkness a destroyer of all things will arise. Demons will attack cities and humanity will know the depths of despair before being cast into the abyss."

The people of Rodetia did not heed his warning. Having only known peace, how could they even begin to imagine such a thing? But then merchant vessels began to sink, and witnesses claimed that it was by the hands of monsters.

It didn't stop at the sea, either. Word quickly spread of travelers across the world began finding themselves at the mercy of monster hordes, day and night. The people of Rodetia became uneasy. They whispered to themselves, "What if that old man was right?" The thought lingered in the back of the mind of even the most out-spoken skeptic.

It wasn't until Princess Meldi was stricken with an unknown malady that all traces of doubt were wiped away. The King is now offering a reward to whoever can cure his daughter.

Your father was a renowned adventurer whose daring exploits won't be elaborated on. You have adventure in your blood. You can do this.

(90% of that is irrelevant to the actual game)


Chaos World is an interesting, yet deeply flawed, little game and
=/

It's labeled as a traditional RPG, but it manages to do a few things that JRPGs weren't doing at the time. Many of things would be more noteworthy if it hadn't come out a few months after FFIV redefined what it meant to be a JRPG. Or, you know, if WRPGs didn't exist. That being said, it is on the NES, and it is built as a pre-FFIV JRPG, so there's plenty of that "Talk to everyone and pray you can figure out what to do next" stuff. Don't worry though, I'm the one playing it, not you.

Anyway, now that the backstory is out of the way, this is what I need from y'all:

The Hero's Class (See below).

The Hero's Gender (Mal or Fem).

The Hero's Name (up to five letters).

The Hero is a personalty-less drone whose backstory boils down to being the only child of Rodetia's hometown hero, Mars. If you want to write out some little blurb for his or her personality if you want to, though.

Classes


Ftr
Ftrs are your classic "Hit things" class. That's pretty much all there is to say about them: They equip swords and stab things. Seeing as how they're the strongest physical attackers in the game, they are obviously very, very bad at all things magical. A Mal Ftr has the highest strength in the game, hands down, while Fem Ftrs grow a bit more balanced (although they're still very strong).


Knight
Knights can't deal as much damage as Ftrs, but have more HP and can take a hit better. They're the party's tank. They can equip spears in addition to swords, although spears tend to be, on average, more powerful. Knights tend to be on the slow side. Mal Knights have higher strength, but Fem Knights will naturally gain a couple of MP, allowing them to cast things like the basic healing spell once or twice.


Thf
Like in many, many, many NES games, the Thf class can't actually steal things. Instead, they're lightning fast archers. They won't hit too hard, but they will hit more than Ftrs and Knights. Their natural MP growth coupled with their available spells makes them excellent utility characters. Mals are a bit stronger and a bit worse at magic, while Fems are faster (fastest character in the game!) and have more MP.


Mage
Mages are masters of elemental magic. That means they blow things up with their minds. They also suck at fighting and have few HP. The Fem has higher MP growth, and the highest Mag stat growth in the game, while the Mal will get a few more HP. Offensive magic isn't incredibly useful, and having the Hero at the mercy of his or her MP pool seems like a bad idea. Not recommended.


Priest
Like Mages, Priests are frail and not very good at fighting. They have access to all divine magic, and, well, you won't get far in this game without a healer. This class also follows the rather rigid gender roles that have been established thus far: Mals are slightly better at fighting, Fems are slightly better at casting.


Shamn
Essentially what you would call a Red Mage, Shamns have access to most spells in both the elemental and divine schools of magic, as well as possessing enough MP to cast said spells and all around decent stats so they're not completely helpless if they run out. Naturally, their spells aren't quite as potent as those of the dedicated casters, but they still pack a punch. Shamns also boast the highest magic defense in the game, and this will be surprisingly important in some areas. They're the slowest class in the game.


Bshp
If Shamns are Red Mages, Bshops would be Sages: They have access to nearly every spell in the game (I think there's one elemental spell they can't use). Their magic-related stats are comparable to the Priest and the Mage's, and on top of that the Mal's physical strength is close to that of a Thf. This is slightly curbed by the fact they have worse weapons and are slower than Thfs. I believe the Mal is slightly better with healing and the Fem is slightly better at blowing things up.

Now hurry up and create our hero (Class, Gender, and a five-letter Name) so we can make with the world saving.

...by the way, this happens on the title screen:

Yeah, I don't know what the hell that's about, and I've played through this game like six times.

Fem Shamn named Anna.

Fem Thf called Swift

A female bshp named "Veggi."

I'm thinkin' female thief, but I am going to second "Veggi" as the name. Shaman doesn't sound like a half-bad class choice either.

Arnie the Male Body Builder Fighter.

Its traditional to make the main character the "Hurt stuff" class.

But thats boring. Make a Lady-Styled Thief.

This game is so, so good.

Oh yeah, Shaman or Bishop. Gender: the one that hurts most. Healers are boring.

I know nothing about this game!

Fem Thf for sure.

Alsia the Fem Knight

Trnp the Fem Thf, for a minimum-vowel-usage-typing bonus.

A Shamn of the Fem persuasion.

Do you really play as turnips in this game, or was that just an allusion to the LPer's alias? Whatever, I propose a Shamn, whatever name or gender you want.

For some reason, I was expecting this when you said you were going to do an LP of Chaos World (I... thought it was the Japanese title.)

But now that that's off the table, I suggest a Female Knight named Venus, and I demand that you keep using those turnip sprites.

A knight or bishop, please!

Let's not oversell it.

But... I'm a boy.

Why in blazes would someone make a game where you don't play as turnips?

I might have screencapped 90% of the dialogue in TLR, but I'm not a big enough masochist to play Chaos Wars.

Mal Fighter named Grgnr.

Also, silly, Dawn! Chaos Wars changing the name of ANYTHING from the original Japanese is crazy talk. If they did that, people might actually, recognize a character or two or something.

Male Knight named Goron.

Fem Bshp named Shep

Probably to appease the increasingly powerful rutabaga lobby.

I have no strong opinion on the name, but I wholeheartedly endorse a Fem Thf.

Male Fighter. Let's break some heads.

This

Male knight named Lunk.

A female Shamn named Crone.

Mal Thf named FUKT.

Yeah, this.

Mal Shamn named Valor.

I ended up going with a Fem Thf named Swift, but given how things have been going for her

would probably be more accurate.

But hey, I've got the battle system tutorial images done:


Yeah, I'm running this shit in the ground.

Where else would a turnip run things?

Episode I: 100G and a Donkey

Upon selecting Begin and selecting a file for our save data, we're whisked away to the class selection screen. The masses of Tyrants spoke, and so our hero shall be a Thf. That's not very heroic, is it? After choosing a class, a new window pops up asking for sex. Hilarious joke about where "sex" is purposefully misinterpreted as the act of intercourse.


After that, we're brought to this screen where we get to catch our first glimpse of our Fem Thf and her default stats. We're allotted a random number of bonus points to augment these stats. Seven is a bit low. Let's reset and try this again.


Twelve is better, but not great. The number of points typically hovers around 10, and can go as low as 5 or as high as 20. You can't back out at this point to reroll, so you have to reset the game (or use save states, I suppose) if you want more bonus points. Base stats will always be the same for each specific class/gender combo.

Since the number of bonus points can go up to 20, you better believe that's what we're gonna get.


There we go. Let's take a look at these stats and why I put points there:

• Str: Determines how much damage you do with physical attacks. Since physical attacking is going to be her primary function, this got the most points.
• Agi: Determines how often you can act. The Fem Thf is already the fastest character in the game, but I figured a tiny boost wouldn't hurt too much. Agi also determines your chances of preemptive attacks, and that's never unwanted.
• Cha: It stands for "Charm." This is Magic Defense. She got points here because enemies that use magic will rip characters with low Cha apart, and non-magical classes tend not to get a lot of it through levels.
• Int: Improves the effects of healing magic. Basically useless for her.
• Mag: Improves the effects of offensive magic. Basically useless for her.
• HP: If these drop to zero, the character dies. Death is kind of a pain in the ass to fix, so we'd like to avoid that, if at all possible. She'll be getting a Meatshield fairly early in the game, so she doesn't need that many HP.
• MP: MP is consumed to cast spells. Thfs don't get a huge amount of MP, but then they really only need twelve points, and she'll definitely have that many by the time we actually get access to her important spells.

Swift it is. You can see the first of many technical difficulties here: Lots and lots of gibberish will be popping up through this LP. My understanding is that Chaos World, like so many Famicom games, is basically held together by duct tape and prayers, and there's a pretty bad Payoff-to-work ratio involved in correcting this stuff.

Don't fear... Press a button.


And we begin. Taking a cue from other JRPGs of this era, the game opens with our heroine getting out of bed. As she stumbles to the front door in a groggy haze, an old man manages to (1) berate her for sleeping in, (2) give her directions to her first objective, (3) identify that her father was named Mars. The old man, I'm guessing, is supposed to be her mother's father, because there's no way this worrywart sired the reportedly badass Mars.


For reasons I cannot even begin to comprehend, Chaos World has an ugly, 8-pixel wide black bar on the left side of the screen. Don't worry, I won't subject you to looking at it anymore, I just wanted to show you it exists.

Swift steps out into scenic Rodetia.


But before we get to that, let's take a look at what Swift's got going on under the hood. First, she unsuccessfully tries to open the menu by checking the ground she's standing on. Silly Swift, you press the Select button to open the menu!

No, really! You guys, the Select button used to actually serve a function in games.

The menu isn't particularly difficult to navigate:

• Eq shows you what a character is currently equipped with and allows you to equip weapons/armor or magic. Right now, Swift is has naught but a Short Bow and Leather Armor. The Leather Armor only gives her a piddly 4 Def, while the Short Bow offers 7 Atk. I'm... I'm not sure why she has 20 Atk and 11 Def: I guess individual characters have their own base Atk/Def statistics that are independent of their Str/Agi/Cha/Int/Mag stats.
• Stat displays the status menu where you can see all the usual stuff. There's also a Place stat. Apparently it tracks your clout in the three major kingdoms, but what that actually does is a mystery. Right now, Swift is completely unknown, even in her native Rodetia.
• Item shows your inventory. Swift only has six inventory slots right now. Unequipped equipment and magic take up inventory slots. There aren't any storage areas either, so this is one of those games where you have to juggle your inventory.
• Mag brings up the magic menu so you can cast spells. Each character can equip up to four spells at a time. De-equipping a spell deletes it, so it might be more appropriate to say that each character can have four spells in their memory at one time. If they want a different spell, they'll have to forget one.

Other stuff: You'll notice that Swift is dirt poor, so there will be no shopping for us just yet. The purpose of the Mark box will become apparent much later on.

Since she has no money to go shopping and can't steal any because she is an incompetent thief, nor will the town's guards let her leave, Swift's only option is to gather information around town. She learns that her father was a fine man, and visits his grave. Mars is the only man who ever died in Rodetia. A few of the individuals seem concerned about the prophecy. One guy tells her of Meldi's illness, and another suggests a cure might be found in Rarm. She follows this up with an unrelated thought about being worried about her husband, who's apparently late.

A sign encouraging individuals to speak with the king during regular business hours to become adventurers is located outside the castle.


Rodetia Castle is fairly compact: The first floor houses stairs up to the throne room, a couple of tables, and an arena that Swift can't enter in back. The guards seem to be chiefly concerned with making sure Swift is polite to the King. Rodetia must be this world's equivalent of Canada.


The King is about this close to cracking under the pressure from the apocalypse prophecy/dying daughter double whammy.

For all of Star Ocean 2's faults, I certainly appreciated how Rena and the King of Cross had already met. In so many games, the hero meets the local monarch for the first time when they're starting out on their Big Adventure. I think this is particularly egregious: Swift is the daughter of Mars, who by all accounts was something of a bigshot. How could she have not met the King before? She literally lives right across the moat from him.

Anyway, he deduces that she wants to save Meldi for fame and glory. This is the game's way of establishing that Swift doesn't do things out of the goodness of her heart. He warns her that many have left, but none have returned.

This is all gonna feel mighty silly when we finally get around to saving her.


He continues: There are oodles of monsters outside, too. He asks if she still plans on going.

Of course she does! Hordes of monsters aren't gonna stand in the way of fame and glory! If you say "No" he just tells you to go away and you have to sit through his little infodump again.

The King offers a challenge to test her might. If she can defeat the monster in the arena, she's free to leave town and search for the cure. Now, I know I just fell off the turnip truck, but do you think that perhaps the reason monsters are gathering outside the town is because you keep their brethren locked up for bloodsport?


Swift isn't allowed in Meldi's room, but she can sneak a peak from the King's room. I'm actually like 60% sure that Meldi's sprite won't appear until you talk to the King.