If you're looking for Devil May Cry's spiritual successor, this isn't it.
The main character, Sieg Wahrheit, is a member of the Knight of Dark Glyphs, who embarks on a mission to find Victor Delacroix, his former best friend. Delacroix has stolen the "Apocrypha of Yzarc," a forbidden book that contains the spirit of Azrail. If he is released, Azrail will cause destruction to the world, destroying the three planes of existence (Heaven, Hell, and Earth) in the process.
Delacroix also holds Sieg responsible for Siela Riviere's death, who was Delacroix's wife. As a result, Victor wants revenge, and intends to make Sieg experience the pain he had suffered. Not only that, Victor wants to purge the world of all its sinners by sending hordes of monsters to get rid of them. Sieg's primary mission is to prevent chaos from spreading to the world, and to stop Delacroix from accomplishing his plans. Sieg also meets a Maiden of the Silver named Arcia Rinslett, who is also after Delacroix, and decides to accompany Sieg on his quest.
It feels like the game is the dumbed-down version of the original novel, with its key points missing from the whole storyline. As a result, the story is downright ridiculous, because it fails to make sense for the most part. Chaos Legion's characters are pretty much plain and uninteresting. Because of this, it's hard to connect with the game's flat cast. It's also difficult to understand the game's plot because of the fact that there are only two main protagonists, a dead woman, and the main villains. Where are the supporting characters? Yeah, they're somewhere out there, but I guess they forgot to put them in the game.
Chaos Legion is pretty much your typical, hack-and-slash action game. The game is played in stages, with each stage divided into scenes. Basically, you must defeat all monsters in each scene to advance to the next.A result screen pops up as you complete a scene and tells you how you did on that particular one; how fast you took out the monsters, allotted time you defeated them, etc. Sieg uses a sword in battle, and he can slash opponents with a typical 4-hit combo. At some point in the game, you play as Arcia, and she uses dual handguns in combat. Playing these characters can be quite fun, but it just looks like they borrowed it off from Devil May Cry. Sieg pretty much copies Dante's swordplay techniques, while Arcia mimics Dante's gunplay tricks and abilities.
The main part of Chaos Legion's game play though, is Sieg's ability to summon Legions at his command. These Legions are called forth to help Sieg battle the monsters that are blocking his path. There are different types of Legions that you can choose to aid you in combat. For example, one focuses on sword attacks, while another focuses on long-range attacks or even act as shields for the player. There are seven Legion types in all, named after negative aspects of life (Guilt, Hatred, Malice, etc).
You can equip up to two Legions at a time during combat. Basically when Legions are summoned, they do most of the dirty work for you when you feel the enemies are too overwhelming to defeat. It comes with a small price though; Sieg becomes less powerful as soon as he summons his Legions, so the player has to be careful when fighting enemies. Legions have a limited time when summoned in battle, and consumes spiritual points (SP). Legions are not immortal in combat, as they are also prone to enemy attacks as well. When their SP reaches zero, their spirit crest breaks, and would be impossible for the player to summon them until that particular crest is restored.
To avoid being manhandled in combat, players can upgrade Legions' five main attributes so they can last longer fighting enemies. These atrributes consist of: Defense, Force, Assist, Enchant, and Attack. Force increases the Legion count by one as the particular spirit crest is leveled up. Assist is a special move that Sieg can perform even though his Legions aren't summoned. Enchant gives Sieg various physical abilities, and it differs from each Legion. Defense is how much damage the Legion takes against enemy strikes, and Attack increases the Legions' power. Leveling up these attributes is not an easy task, so it takes a lot of time and patience to get all the experience necessary to upgrade your Legions.
Overall, Chaos Legion's game play is just all no-brainer action. Each stage has you picking off specific targets, while at some stages it requires you to defeat all enemies to advance to the next level, making it extremely repetitive that you would be bored of this game the first hour playing through it. Enemies don't change at all; you will see a lot of them in each chapter, which just makes the whole experience quite hackneyed. Boss fights are the real challenge, and prove to bring some excitement to the table, even though the game almost never offers it. It requires a bit of strategy and figuring out their attack patterns to take them down, which can either be easy, hard, but somewhat satisfying, to say the least.
Despite the uninspired hack-and-slash action, summoning Legions are what makes the game play fun. Having supernatural monsters do your bidding for you while sitting back and watching the action is an enjoyable sight to see. The downside of the whole thing though, is the crazy amount of experience you have to gain in order to level up these Legions. If you thought the whole game play experience was absolutely boring, prepare to be more frustrated. This means you have to go back to the same stages again and again to acquire a ton of experience points. The repetitiveness is bad enough, and leveling up mostly ruins the whole thing altogether.
Graphics are not exactly praiseworthy. As you go to every stage, you will see the same, castle-like textures. The background is no exception either. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing the same level in an endless loop. Chaos Legion's environment is mostly monotonous, that it feels somewhat lifeless and uninspiring, which can cause additional headaches for the player.
Enemies and Legions don't even look like monsters; they look more like moving (or floating), lifeless objects. Character and enemy movements are kind of fluid though, and one of the few good things about the game's overall plain graphics. Slash marks, strikes, and other hit effects look and feel so fake and unrealistic. But even though the scenery may look really dull, it does capture Chaos Legion's gothic aura. The game's environment may all look the same, but you can feel the game's depressing, dark tone in the entire experience of playing from beginning to end.
Music is mostly rock and metal, with some classical elements added to it. It's actually nice to listen to them for the first hour or so, but as you progress through the game, the sound just gets very generic, and hearing them over and over again can be quite tiresome. Despite the game's unmemorable tunes, the sound effects are actually passable. Sword slashes, gunshots, and other sound effects surprisingly sound believable. Voice acting is rather mediocre though, and doesn't have much of a good script. Characters don't sound very convincing as a result, and at times they can be a bit too over-dramatic.
By the looks of it, this game could only appeal mostly on the hardcore hack-and-slash action gamers. Overall, Chaos Legion is a disappointment, which could have been a whole lot better if it were not for its dull story and characters, ceaseless, and hack-and-slash gameplay. Although summoning Legions may be fun against millions of enemies at once, it alone can't save this game from giving players a mundane experience.