“The sinner shall be atoned. Even though no punishment will be enough for your sin.”

What is the worth of this experience we know of as life? There is a popular response to this question that has persisted throughout human social understanding. That the purpose of life is to be judged. That this existence we are experiencing is merely transitory. That it serves as a filter to determine which of us are worthy to behold the infinite love of the universe or to instead suffer in ceaseless unfathomable torment.

Seig Wahrheit is a condemned man. A character awaiting judgment. It does not matter to Seig that the sins on which he is accused are not the ones that he actually bears any guilt for. He is guilty all the same and knows it. Yet most insidiously still, despite the nigh certainty of his ultimate fate, he must ensure he persists until his day of judgment. To expire prematurely would disservice those whom have allowed him to prolong in this existence, this torture that is being alive. Such is his belief in life’s purpose as he has been taught to perceive. It is a trial to be endured, to exist is to be in pursuit of a knowingly futile atonement. To become a lamb marching willingly to their own slaughter.

Chaos Legion is a game that distills this idea of self-flagellation into essence. The struggle of life and existence is brought up, but extracting meaning from it is not to be sought. It is an answered question after all. Rather this game seeks to revere in the struggle itself. Absolution for Sieg is not even on the cards, he is to suffer eternally. This game seeks to beat you down and beat you down and beat you down until you understand you only exist to be beaten down. Yet you must get up each time. Powerful obstacles will incrementally show up to crush you. Through both perseverance and gradual acclimation towards these inferno legions in which you are eternally bound you will eventually overcome them. Your reward in doing so? More frequent and harsher trials. The challenge which you struggled to overcome repeated until mundane. Despite statistically growing over the course of the game, it never quite gets any easier. Rather you merely build up a tolerance to the pain. Even this is not ideal. The pain is all Sieg has after all to remind himself that he is in fact, still alive.

So, what awaits you at the end of all this? What is the final verdict in this perseverance that embodies Sieg’s existence? What reprieve will he be granted in death? You poor naive fool. You will never have been made to suffer enough. A judgment postponed. You get to be alive in this living hell for a while longer.

How cruel the creators of such a world must be.

(Chaos Legion is a game entirely dedicated to its mechanical nuance and is tightly crafted to be as such. Despite my framing its story and narrative elements is incredibly minimal. In its international localization it has been finely retuned in response to criticism of the Japanese version being boringly easy. The result of which is this game made for the sensibilities of sadomasochists. It demands mastery of obtuse systems that you will likely need to consult external references to truly understand. but feel ‘satisfying’ once mastered. If you are more inclined to experiencing it for its cool vibes you can forgo this suffering and should seek out the original Japanese version instead. Myself though? I think it is only through this pain it afflicted upon me that allowed me to connect to it at all)

One of the main Discord servers I'm active in decided to start a gaming equivalent to a book club and chose this first because "niche PS2 game with a moody atmosphere" is like crack cocaine to our primary demographic of trans people with pretentious opinions on games. The first couple days of the month allotted to beating it went well with glowing praise for its combat mechanics, atmosphere, etc. and it seemed like we would have had the right to be contrarians about this overlooked PS2 game secretly being good. However, as the days went by, more and more people started to get filtered in a variety of places: Chapter 3's initial test of your knowledge of the combat mechanics, the Chapter 8 boss, the grind before the final boss. The English version's inflation of enemy stats in comparison to the Japanese version was just too much for us to handle. But when it seemed like no one would be able to beat this game, one brave hero rose up: GingerV
While weaker game club channel posters cowered in fear at the challenge posed by Chaos Legion, GingerV rose to the challenge and opened up a speedrun for the game's hardest difficulty. From there, they not only learned a lot of the game's mechanics that weren't explained well but noticed how odd it was that the run spent 40 minutes on Chapter 5 when its times for the other chapters were usually about 10 minutes. They then realized that these 40 minutes were spent farming health bar upgrades and decided to do the same, giving them the tools they needed to clear the game with little effort. The PS2 action game that filtered a server with several unironic DMC2 fans had finally met its match and could be laid to rest.

I love this game so far, admittedly I haven't finished it (I don't know why it says "completed" on my review ignore that), but I've gotten as far as the last stage and I probably will soon, so I think I've played enough to say it's honestly way better than a lot of people give it credit for. The legion summoning system adds a lot of extra depth and a real sense of strategy to the game's combat, and while the legions could definitely be more well-balanced (I don't know what I expected from a legion called Flawed but I wish it was stronger), it's still a great time overall, even if it has some moments of kind of infuriating level design. Admittedly, the story is quite shit, but it's one of those games where the story is really just there as an excuse to contextualize what you're doing in the game, so it's not bad enough to detract from the experience at all in my opinion.

Also, everyone who calls this a "Devil May Cry ripoff" is insane, it came out a whole 2 years before the first actually good game in that series (DMC 3 my beloved) so I get kind of annoyed seeing people pretend it's just a worse version of something that came before; even putting the fact I vastly prefer it to DMC 1 and 2 aside, the gameplay here is different enough that the only real similarity is that they're hack and slash games on the PS2. Chaos Legion is much more about effectively utilizing the various legions you can summon and fighting alongside them to strategically defeat your enemies, and choosing the right legion for the right situation, as opposed to Devil May Cry being more about moving quickly to avoid your enemies' attacks and seeing what stylish combos you can come up with to defeat them.

Overall I honestly kind of love this game, and while it can be kind of janky and strange, it's still definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of this genre, or even if you just want to play a game where you fight as a summoner who needs to figure out when to use the various summons he has access to, and which ones to use specifically depending on the situation.