Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos Review - Part 1

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Like mixing peanut butter and chocolate, Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos combines cute anime girls with strategy RPG gameplay in a junk-food-esque combination you simply can't get enough of. If your introduction to Queen's Blade has been the anime series you'll be encouraged to know that not only does the game feature an original scenario featuring your favorite characters, the gameplay is also rock solid. Building on a foundation laid by the Super Robot Wars games, Banpresto plugs the Queen's Blade universe into a successful game formula (much like the Gundam Musou or Hokuto Musou games) with great success. Keep reading my review of the Japanese PSP game Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos to find out how.

The first few minutes I spent with Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos on my PSP had me wondering if I may have fallen for a cleverly disguised ruse; a terrible game clothed in scantily clad illustrated women to lure as many lonely unsuspecting victims to pull out their wallets and sink hard earned money into nothing more than so much shovelware. Thankfully I was proven VERY wrong, and instead was treated to a thoroughly enjoyable, top notch portable title that fans of both strategy RPGs and 2D women will enjoy equally.

The game introduces two new characters to the Queen's Blade cast, Cute and Jean. Cute is an aptly named girl warrior whose character design resembles Mii from Popotan, no surprise considering that anime director and character designer Akio Watanabe (aka. Poyoyon Rock), designer of characters from Popotan and Nurse Witch Komugi, did the designs for these two characters.

Jean is the "everyman" of this game, though relatively cowardly and lecherous, he is the "nice-guy" character with whom we are to meant identify and is the main protagonist. Jean is in many ways the antithesis of the typical Western hero. Rather than being muscular, active, aggressive, and smart-ass, Jean is rather small, passive, timid, and friendly. The typical anime fan may identify with this type of character more than the normal western one and it's fun to have another game that takes this into consideration.

The story centers around these two characters and therefore avoids being just a rehash of what fans may already be familiar with from either the first or second season of the anime. Rather than shoehorning these characters into the Queen's Blade world, care has been taken to integrate Cute into the universe as a Queen's Blade combatant and ultimately it comes across as an expansion of the Queen's Blade cast rather than a pointless side story or betrayal of the original material. Kudos to the developers for this alone.

Continue to:

• Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos Review - Part 2
• Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos Review - Part 3
• Queen's Blade Spiral Chaos Review - Part 4