Hardcore Droid: It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen Square Enix’s mobile division show some real ambition. Where once they delivered ambitious originals like Drakerider and Chaos Rings, now they seem more content to churn out ports and remakes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest accompanied by the occasional free-to-play distraction. After three long years, Square has finally released a new installment in their Chaos Rings trilogy, and it does anything but rest on its laurels.
So far 2015 has been a banner year for Android RPGs. While, unfortunately, we haven’t exactly seen a straight Western RPG lately, Android has, on the other hand, in this third quarter of 2015, developed a potpourri of new digital role-playing games. This year’s best include Action RPGs, Puzzle RPGs, ports of classic JRPGs, as well as a contemporary JRPG, and finally a couple of indies inspired, in part, by Western RPGs. Among these there are, thankfully, a decent-sized contingent of mobile-only titles. Regardless of the intended audience or sub-genre, however, each and every title below is deserving of its spot on this list in spades. What we have, considered as a whole, is a solid and eclectic spread, one that is reflective of the veritable smorgasbord of delights that Android gaming is becoming.
PG: I'm going to start this review off with a very big proviso - it appears that Chaos Rings III is broken. Or at the very least the version I'm playing is. The game crashes to homescreen every time a particular boss pops up.
There haven't been any other reports of this, and we've reached out to Square Enix to see what's going on. It might well be an isolated incident, but it's certainly worth taking into consideration before you splash out the big wodge of cash you need to spend to pick this one up.
With that in mind, we won't be adding a score to this review yet. But we will keep you updated as to whether or not the issue is resolved.
Chaos Rings 3 is a big, meaty evolution of the series that makes a lot of changes. Some of those feel like natural progressions from the older games, while others are obviously coming in from other sources, but the game on the whole is richer for having all of them.
