Just by watching the opening sequence, I was hooked. I was fairly impressed by the opening song and soundtrack, since I do pay a lot of attention to the music while I’m playing. It enhances my enjoyment of the game considerably if the soundtrack is worth listening to on its own. Generation of Chaos takes you to the world of Lost Grounds, where after the Dravanian Revolution ended, the country was left in ruins. Of course, someone needed to take control and that someone is the Minister Zeo. Like many similar games, the premise of the story is that the kingdoms are fighting against each other and you need to take control of one and lead them to victory. You begin with the option to choose one of two kingdoms. You either follow a campaign through the eyes of Gena, the leader of the 8th Dravanian Knight Unit, or Allen, the ruler of Zodia. After completing one of the kingdom campaigns, the other 8 kingdoms will be unlocked. Each campaign contains several chapters and the story progresses rather slowly unfortunately. There is also a bit of a hiccup with the voices if you go through the dialogue too quickly. With the cast of intriguing characters, I had hoped that there would be more animated cut scenes.

In this strategic RPG, there are many things to consider. It’s not just about winning the fight, but you need to take care of your army by maintaining the loyalty of your soldiers and by recruiting additional commanders. You also need to manage the supplies, invest in the market, and develop and build new land. You are basically managing the entire kingdom and everything that is needed to keep it safe. There are also many factors that can affect your outcome, whether it is the weather, the landscape that you’re in or the time of day. One of the hardest challenges is learning all the acronyms and the recognizing the icons. The manual only does the job of defining what they are, not necessarily what they do and how it helps you in the game. Also, I am not sure if I am going blind, but the menus are also difficult to read due to the small font.

For the generation of gamers that grew up with 3D games and lifelike graphics, the visual effects here probably won’t be very impressive. I personally like this style very much, and the PSP is definitely capable of handling a lot more. I’m still kind of stuck back in the SNES/Playstation era of games. The maps, however, are colourful and aesthetically pleasing and the anime characters displayed during dialogue are vibrant and interesting to look at. During the 30 vs 30 action on the battlefield, even the entire mess on screen looks great. The best part about the battle is when your commanding officer can perform their super move which does mass amounts of damage to all the enemies in the area. That’s always fun to watch.

The music has a very heroic, RPG-like feel to it, but I have to admit, after several hours, it does get a bit repetitive and there is a risk that you might get sick of it. The Japanese opening song during the main menu was quite captivating however. The voice acting throughout the game wasn’t bad. Even with your must-have corny dialogue at times, it was relatively well done. The storyline didn’t progress very quickly, and there were instances where I felt a bit lost and confused as to what exactly was going on. Maybe it was the poor translation, or maybe it was just me.

There is much to learn with Generation of Chaos and it doesn’t come easy. If you are a veteran of strategic RPGs, this might be a good challenge for you. If you aren’t, this game could be very frustrating and you probably wouldn’t want to give it more than 30 minutes since the learning curve is quite steep. For the casual player, sometimes it’s really hard to get involved in a game when the menus are confusing and you have no idea what the menus even say. If you own a PSP to play a quick game here and there, this probably wouldn’t be the game for you. However, if you want a complicated strategy based game that really works the brain and involves a lot more than turn based hack and slash, then Generation of Chaos might just be the game for you. I probably wouldn’t be the first to run out and pick a tough SRPG to play, but once in awhile, a challenging game such as this one, is worth looking into.