These aint kids toys: Queen’ Blade Spiral Chaos review. A not so shabby game.

Following my weakness to resist the seductive charms of the Revoltech Queen’s Blade figures, comes the inability to giving in to the urge to give the Queen’s Blade PSP game a run. Despite my experiences with the somewhat shithouse Ikkitousen (Battle Vixens) video games from ‘Marvellous Entertainment’ (which I can assure you they are NOT), I was a little bit worried that this game would be a lame ass cash-in. I soon discovered it was much like the Super Robot Wars series of games in the gameplay style and that buoyed my enthusiasm a bit, but I was still concerned…

Luckily though, those concerns were not needed. Considering how they could have probably just filled this game with piss poor fan service and left it at that to make some money from it, they have actually made a pretty decent turns based strategy game. The story is pretty plain really, Cute (the main Girl character) is accompanied by Jan, her servant while she practises to become strong and eventually enter the Queen’s Blade Tournament. On her travels, she bumps into Leina and a bunch of other characters from the TV show.

This is the ‘Gekitou” (fierce fight) special Edition pack version that I got. It comes with a few extra goodies and cost a whack more dollars, but I think it was worth the effort. The Gekitou pack comes with a big package, due to the fact that it is housing a Figma toy of the main protagonist Cute (review and pics in this post), the game in standard PSP case, a small Spiral Chaos artwork book, and a CD that has 11 tracks which contain some of the phrases from the game characters that are used during battle.

As I stated before, it plays very much like Super Robot Wars (SRW) in that you traverse a grid that is laid over the landscape and move your units around to engage enemy units. When you engage a unit, you select your actions from a screen where you can also see what the enemy will do before the fight, then it loads a small animated battle of what you and the enemy do as they battle it out. Simple but effective.

Left is move selection, right is confirmation, and it shows the attacks the enemies will do . In the left screen, where the crossed swords are, if there is a character that can have their armour knocked off, the results will be predicted there.

There are various conditions to winning and losing each battle at times. you may have to keep a certain character alive and if they are beaten then even though the rest are fine you lose, or you may have to beat a particular enemy. This adds many levels of strategy that need to be considered. Do you berserk your way in to the enemy leader and hope you can take them out, or slowly progress up the map as a group taking on all comers methodically. This part is a direct copy of the SRW gameplay that has been going on for many years, and it still manages to satisfy.

Conditions, Win, kill everyone. Lose, your team dies. Simple really.

However, being Queen’s Blade, clothes need to come off. That is where the ‘Perfect Knockdown’ and armour system comes into play. When a character receives damage, their health goes down, and a small amount of damage is dealt to their armour. When a piece of armour is broken completely, you get the opportunity for a bonus attack, where 100% of damage dealt goes to the armour and not their health, it is possible to string these bonus attacks together until all the armour is broken off. This is the ‘Perfect Knockdown.’ It is very hard to do and a lot of planning has to go in to how to attack and which attacks to use, as different attacks damage different areas to pull it (and clothes) off.

The ‘Crush’ means armour has been broken, which initiates a little flash of the characters over the screen, during this time you select the other attack to damage armour more.

Once a specific armour piece is broken, you get a short damage sequence coming across the screen, and the players sprite reflects the damage received. So if a characters breast plate is damaged, their shirt will be torn, legs will result in torn pants etc. etc. It may just sound a bit pervy and it is a tad, but it actually adds a lot of interesting strategy to the game. The more you ‘de-clothe’ a character, the more likely they are to get embarrassed as well, this causes them to be unable to attack at random times throughout the battle. This applies to your characters as well, so beware! Best of all, it could easily be applied to SRW in the future! Oh and it’s the only way for Jan to gather forces.

Damage is then reflected in the battle sprite.

And the status screen as seen on this Cute clone.

Some monsters in the world can talk and it’s these ones that Jan can ‘recruit.’ By knocking their clothes off… It is actually pretty hard to do, as Jan is weak in the attack department and his one move ‘tackle’ hits all armour parts, so you have to soften them up with other characters and allow Jan the final hit. Tricky when trying to keep everyone alive at times, without killing the target too soon. Once you have the character, Jan can summon them to battle for your team.

The character with the little orange line above their head is one for Jan.

Between battles (stages) there is an opportunity to save, shop, talk and train in the ‘camp’ screen. This adds a bit more interest in the matter as you need to build the ‘relationship’ between Jan and the other characters to make them more effective in battle. If a certain level of friendship is reached, you can have one character back-up the other. Sometimes they will jump in and defend but most often they will attack after the enemy has had their chance. It kind of pays to keep the same two characters together to make them a more effective fighting machine.

Below: on the left the swords indicate back up options. On the right, the stars show the level of friendship with Jan.

The Shop screen

You will need them to be a more effective fighting machine as well. Some of the levels throw quite a few bad guys in your way and only through strategic attacks, using the ground for stat bonuses, grass and hills give you (and the enemy) the upper hand when attacking will be the only way to get through. You can only carry a limited amount of items with you and their ‘magic points’ are fairly limited as well.

The controls are simple and although the game is in Japanese, it is relatively easy to work out what is what. The only major hassle I have found so far is working out what specific items do when it’s not heal. The game loads quite a bit and I noticed that there was a delay when the battle animation started as it loaded each time a character moved. This was solved easily due to the fact that you can install some game data onto the memory stick, much like the PS3 and now you don’t even notice the load times. Which is a good thing as it was annoying before and recommended for enjoying the game more.

The fight scenes use cute ‘chibi’ style characters which might have been due to hardware constraints or artistic integrity, or a way to lessen the sexual nature of it. Personally though, I don’t think it looks too bad, especially when taking into consideration the wide nature of the PSP screen. If they were taller and skinnier characters, then they would probably look too small. They look like sprites, but I suspect they are animated flat polygons, as they move and erm ‘jiggle’ in the same style as many web based flash animations move. It also allows for quality scaling to take place, as the characters fly at the screen when doing their attacks, which all look quite spectacular
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Each character is voiced and makes various comments when making a move, which changes form time to time. I am not that far into the game, but so far all characters are voiced by their anime VAs. Speaking of the sexual nature and the anime, it is most interesting to see that this game, although looking fairly pervy in the screen shots is actually quite a bit tamer than the Queen’s Blade ‘Wandering Warrior’ (season 1) and ‘Successor to the Throne’ (season 2) TV show. so far I have not encountered the slightest bit of nipple or completely naked breast, so some fans may be a bit disappointed about that. It comes pretty close, but never crosses that line.

To progress the story along, there are a variety of conversations o be had, most happen mid-game and is just the dialog box. In between some sections, there are cutscenes that are very nicely animated (occasionally better than the cartoon itself) and some help the story whereas others are jut comedy interludes. Like the hot springs section, where Liena, Tomoe and cute are in the hot springs and Liena and Tomoe are talking and thinking they have both beaten each other in the breast size competition. Cute leaves wondering where hers’ are. Mildly amusing, but no story progress at all. I guess they had to add a bathing scene in there somehow.

The sound is pretty good, it starts with quite a jazzy tune for the introduction animation and moves onto fairly standard not-irritating pieces for the rest of the game. It doesn’t vary much, but each character seems to have a bit of their own theme and it seems appropriate each time. It manages to get going when a new bunch of enemies appear, and cranks when you go for the attack. Even though the same music is used over and over, for me it doesn’t get too repetitive. I am not sure why.

One aspect I like is it has an emergency screen. If in the middle of a scene that is of a sensitive nature, a quick press of a couple of buttons (select and start) and it puts up a fake game screen. What really does it for me on this screen is it is completely 8 bit in style! ALRIGHT! The tone of the look has potential as well, it look like a map trawling RPG. Hmmmm.

Click me for better view!

I think you may have gathered that I quite like this game. It is based on a standard framework of gameplay that has been used for a while and is still remarkably fun. It has also managed to keep the feel of Queen’s Blade and the effects thereof. I probably would only recommend this to strategy fans that can handle the fan service and fans of Queen’s Blade, but if you are a fan of strategy games, I think this is at least worth a try. It feels quite rewarding and is a pretty cool little game.

Lots More Screenshots.

Opening Movie Shots.

Mid game movie shots and stills that show up occasionally.

Chats

Stats

I wonder about the placement of this bone when you shrink these monsters down from their larger view. That bone is one of the ones hanging from his chest belt

Fights