As you all know by now, I enjoy a good mindless beat em up, therefore it’s natural to presume that I enjoy musou games. Demon Chaos, known as Ikusagami in Japan is one of the more niche musou games out there which is likely due to the fact that it was only released in Japan and Europe, so this is yet another one of those beat em ups that America never got. Many musou games are known to take place in historic time periods and Demon Chaos is no exception. Like Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara, Demon Chaos takes place in the sengoku period, though as is evident by the game’s title, there are demons involved, which makes it similar to Onimusha in terms of setting. Unlike Onimusha however, the way the demons are handled in the story feel more like an afterthought as the game’s story is centered primarily on the events of the sengoku period. Despite this however, you spend the entire game completely detached from the conflict amongst men and are mostly concerned with the demons that flood the battlefields. This can make the story feel a bit dry at times since the demons themselves are pretty bland and uninteresting, despite taking center stage in all of the missions. I’d argue the events of the sengoku period are far more interesting but they don’t really play a huge part in the game’s story which is a shame. Those of you who are familiar with the sengoku period will be glad to see many historical figures and some of them look very similar to their Samurai Warriors counterparts, particularly Mitsuhide and Nobunaga but before you get your hopes up, you don’t play as any of them in this game. Demon Chaos has you controlling the most badass musou character in the history of musous, Inugami, a wolf man who would crush Lu Bu, Tadakatsu Honda, Orochi and even Keiji Maeda in a matter of seconds, possibly by accident due to the fact that the combat in this game is absolutely insane.
If there’s one thing I have to praise about the combat of Demon Chaos, it’s that it may quite possibly be one of the most empowering experiences I have ever had in a 3d beat em up. The satisfaction of mowing down thousands of demons in seconds never gets old. The moment you see a large clump of red dots on the minimap, you can’t help but feel excited because you know that you’re going to build up a huge hit count. Initially, Inugami is pretty weak since he uses a basic 4 hit combo with square and a finisher which can be activated with either triangle or circle. The circle finisher consumes part of Inugami’s spirit gauge so it’s often smarter to use the triangle finisher to conserve your spirit. The reason for this is that you can press r1 to go into rage mode which sends Inugami into a rampage, slaughtering thousands of demons in seconds. You will constantly use this ability throughout the game as it is the most efficient means of eliminating demons, of course you won’t be able to stay in it for long since rage mode consumes your spirit gauge and once it is depleted, rage mode will end so you will want to be careful where and when you trigger it. The regular combos don’t really do much outside of building up your spirit gauge so you won’t be relying on them that much, especially when enemies drop items that fill up your spirit gauge, allowing you to continue your rampage. Put simply, it’s a very bare bones, simplistic combat system that is drizzled in visual carnage to cover up the fact that you are doing the same thing over and over again, making it the most unapologetically musou experience you can get and this is what will ultimately make or break Demon Chaos for you.
So much carnage, you can barely see anything on screen
Like many other musou games, Demon Chaos involves working together with AI controlled armies to complete certain missions and during these missions, you will need to protect your troops to prevent them from dying. What differentiates Demon Chaos from other musou games is that the primary purpose of the player’s character is to protect the armies, not themselves and while Inugami can certainly die, it’s mostly a rare occurrence due to the fact that most enemies can barely harm him. Because of this, you are encouraged to be as aggressive as possible, so long as you aren’t recklessly mowing down troops on the opposite side of the map while your army is struggling to survive against the hordes you left behind. The good news is that you never have to worry about being comboed to death like in the early Dynasty Warriors games but the bad news is that your AI companions are excrutiatingly weak and frail, so you have to babysit them in every mission. In a way though, it’s not too far off from the average musou experience in that regard, except the core of Demon Chaos’ gameplay is mostly the tactical aspect of completing missions with as few casualties as possible and this is ultimately what maintains the longevity of the player’s engagement.
Most missions involve you escorting the armies to a blood crystal in order for them to destroy it and eliminate the demon spawns in that area. Other missions however require you to escort them to a specific location before they either die or the time runs out. Thankfully you do have partial control of your AI companions as you are allowed to lead the armies by pressing R2, having them follow wherever it is you move to. Now in theory you may wish to deactivate the lead command when clearing out the large waves of demons to prevent casualties and while you can, should you wish to lead them a second time you have to be in the proximity of the army to get them to follow you which I found to be rather aggravating, so it’s often better to keep leading them at all times. Later on, you get access to the stop command which has all the AI troops move to the closest pillar without you having to deactivate the lead command which comes in handy should you wish to go out and break through a few clumps of enemies, as well as finding some hidden weapons in containers laid around the map without your troops getting killed trying to follow you.
Now thankfully, the game does offer some utilities to assist you in protecting your pathetic soldiers in the form of pillars. Pillars can be placed just about anywhere on the map so long as the terrain isn’t man made. Of course you cannot place them amongst a horde of demons but you can place them near your AI companions. Once you place a pillar, they must be constructed by the AI first before they can be utilized, during this time you will need to protect the area around the pillar, since demons can destroy the pillars if they aren’t protected. This is where the circle ability comes in handy. It causes an explosion that annihilates a ton of enemies in a small area for a small portion of your spirit gauge. While it may not be as useful as a finisher, I found it extremely useful on its own due to the fact that it’s the best way to protect nearby pillars when you have low spirit. Now of course you could use rage mode if you wanted to and eliminate everything but chances are, you won’t have enough spirit to activate it.
The pillars come in 3 variants and are all used to support your AI companions efforts. The first of which is the life pillar which heals all of your companions. The second being the fire pillar which helps deal extra damage to blood crystals in order to destroy them quickly, saving you time when you have to destroy several of them (which you will). The third and final pillar is the bow pillar, which acts as a turret to use against nearby demons in order to help you destroy them. There will be times where you will be attacked from different angles and this is when the pillars come in handy as you can only be at once side of the battlefield at a time, so while you’re mowing down enemies on one side, the pillars will help protect your armies on the other side. Constructing pillars does costs EP though so you cannot build limitless pillars but I found that the game gives you plenty of EP, so it’s worth constructing as many pillars as possible, without wasting your EP by letting demons destroy them before they can be of use. This adds a minor tower defense aspect to the gameplay that is more important than you would initially think as being the unstoppable badass that you are, you’d likely presume that you can eliminate all the enemies before your troops can be harmed and while that may be true for the first couple of stages, in later stages it isn’t quite that simple as the difficulty goes up a ton, as does the enemy count, so the more you play, the more you kill and the more pillars you’ll be placing. It gets pretty frantic at times but that’s kind of what makes the game so engaging to play, though it can get a tad frustrating, particularly due to the fact that failing a mission will get you sent back to the title screen, so you have to restart the entire mission from scratch. There have been times when I reached the end of a mission, only for all of the AI troops to die at the end, thus failing the mission, which was annoying as hell.
Speaking of frustrating, you will occasionally encounter greater demons throughout the game and these enemies exist as the game’s equivalent of officers in Dynasty Warriors, though there are considerably fewer of them. These enemies can be extremely deadly if you don’t take them down quickly as they can kill a lot of your soldiers. they can also pose a huge threat to Inugami himself since their attacks can take away soul power. Soul power is essentially Inugami’s health and he can only sustain up to 5 hits from a boss before he dies, sometimes even less depending on which weapon he is equipped with. Now he can be healed by the priestess Aoi but she is also vulnerable to these attacks and you have to be careful not to let her die as well. Of course there is the possibility of finding soul recovery items too which can come in handy if you can get them but if you aren’t fortunate enough to find these luxuries and Aoi is dead, all you can do is mash square and pray that they die. There is a guard button which awkwardly has Inugami crouch and unable to move. This can be activated by pressing triangle, it’s hardly useful due to the fact that you are completely stationary when using it. It’s not practical to go in and out of guard to protect yourself from enemy attacks, let alone the fact that pressing triangle after an attack has you performing the finisher move instead. It’s a waste of a button if you ask me, as it could have been replaced with an evasion ability or something. Honestly the greater demons are the worst part of the game since they do not blend in well with the game’s mechanics. Every fight against them just feels sloppy as your entire moveset is built around mowing down hordes of enemies rather than a single health sponge. This is particularly noticeable when you enter rage mode as you’ll suddenly start sliding around the battlefield, making it hard for your hits to connect to the greater demon.
It goes without saying that having numerous enemies on screen takes its toll on the visuals, though the fact that they managed to fit so many enemies on screen is such a technical feat that I think it’s fair to overlook the bland level aesthetic. Surprisingly enough however, the character models are actually somewhat decent. It does help that Inugami’s character design really makes him stand out, with his huge white hair that kinda makes him look similar to the Samurai Warriors’ depiction of Shingen. I’m kind of a sucker for crazy hair like this in games. In a way he also kind of resembles a white haired version of Brahms from Valkyrie Profile but if he was a wolf instead of a vampire. The soldiers and demons look decent enough though the demons remind me of the insects you fight in the Earth Defense Force games for some reason, albeit not as big and in greater quantities. The game features numerous CGI cut scenes and while they’re serviceable, they don’t hold a candle to the animated cutscene that plays when you boot up the game, which is absolutely stellar. Honestly I was pleasantly surprised by the game’s visuals as a whole, of course I would never consider it to be one of the most visually appealing games on the PS2 but I would certainly commend it for being able to render so many enemies on screen and still look presentable.
The game’s music is decent enough, I mean it’s not amazing but it gets the job done. Many of the tracks have an oriental vibe that fits the setting pretty well. I particularly like the relaxing song that plays in many of the cutscenes when Aoi and Inugami are present, but I found that many of the other tracks didn’t stand out as much. It’s certainly not a bad soundtrack though I can’t see myself looking up any of the songs any time soon. The voice acting is entirely in Japanese which isn’t surprising considering the fact that the game was never released outside of Japan and Europe. It’s not really a huge deal though since it does fit the setting of the game, though it would have been nice to hear an English dub, even if it was terrible, at least it would give me something to laugh at.
Ultimately, I think the best way to describe Demon Chaos as a whole is that it is overly simplified and messy but that’s kind of why it works. It’s definitely not trying to be a refined or technical action game, rather it plays to its strengths by keeping things simple, yet offering enough utility to get players to think about what it is they are doing and strategize their maneuvers in order to complete each mission. It’s certainly not a game you can fall asleep playing, though it can certainly feel that way if you aren’t a fan of musou games. The same could be said for other musou games honestly. Part of what makes these games engaging is the fact that you are under constant pressure due to the mission objectives and Demon Chaos elevates that to the next level thanks to the pillar system, since you have to think more. On the downside however, this comes at a severe cost of flexibility which is ultimately what will turn most people off from this game and honestly, I don’t blame them. Even I come to expect more flexibility from action games than this and I’m usually quite tolerant of mindless beat em ups but at least Demon Chaos manages to do what it sets out to do and does it well enough that outside of a few minor issues, it’s actually strangely enjoyable for me. I think that if they added too much complexity with the pillars, it would probably get on my nerves but the careful balance of simple combat and simple tactics blends together surprisingly well. You could say that Demon Chaos is a guilty pleasure of mine as I can’t imagine many people enjoying this game due to its overly simplified gameplay. Even musou fans will likely be turned off from the lack of characters and varied movesets but who knows, maybe there is someone else out there who will enjoy this game despite its flaws. I hesitate to call Demon Chaos a hidden gem but at the same time I think it may appeal to a few individuals, particularly those who enjoy mindless gameplay like I do so if you are one of those people then you may want to give this game a shot.
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