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The story picks up as a young warrior called Sieg Wahrheit is summoned for a task. One of his best friends Victor Delacroix has seemingly turned to the dark side and he must now search him out to destroy him. It is a rather convoluted story at times, although presented very well in various stylish cutscenes. Players will find they neither care for nor identify with the characters in the storyline, and although it wants to be, it is not as inspiring as it should be.

Throughout the game players control the main character Sieg. Resembling Dante from DMC in some respects, Sieg on his own is fairly limited with only a sword as a weapon and one button for attacks. Movement is fairly smooth although limited, with the only other move available being a single jump. Not even a guard function. Not surprisingly this cuts down on the range of action the player can take, and quite often play will reduce to just mashing the attack button with the occasional jump to avoid an attack. Certainly not as thrilling as we would have hoped for, although the action is spiced up a little with the introduction of legions, which we'll cover soon. Unlike Dante, Sieg's weapon is not upgradeable, and new weapons cannot be found throughout the game. This would seem to be rather unfortunate, since part of the attraction of playing a game like this is the promise of new abilities or huge new weapons.

To get past this personal failing of Sieg's Capcom have added legions. These legions referred to in the title are groups of beasts that can be summoned by Sieg. Once summoned the legions follow Sieg aiding him in fighting against any monsters, and generally legions will be needed for a lot of the fights Sieg gets into. In this respect Chaos Legion does provide something a little different and interesting, and largely succeeds with its execution. Throughout the game Sieg will be able to acquire up to 7 legions for summoning. Starting with a basic legion of swordsmen further legions of archers, bombs or even shields can be found as Sieg progresses towards his goal. Limited to equipping only two of these legions at a time, there is a little bit of strategy involved in choosing which legions to take into a particular level. Some enemies and bosses are particularly weak against some legions, and equipping the wrong legions can sometimes mean replaying the level.

Once a legion is acquired it can be summoned in its most basic form. Increased use of the legion earns that legion experience points, which can then be used to upgrade certain aspects. The number of members of the legion can be increased, new attacks learned, and general attack and defence can be improved. Adding this sort of low level customisation is a nice touch, although it could have been extended even further to provide a greater level of experimentation. Being able to mess around with a wider range of characteristics and attacks would have helped to round out the game well, making it more of an experience. As good as it is to see upgrades here, it seems a wasted opportunity that it wasn't taken further.

The levels in Chaos Legion are another area that could have been done so much better. Here they are largely very linear and quite uninspiring. Each level is broken into sections each of which has one of two goals, either to defeat all the monsters in that section or to defeat one particular enemy. Some sections for puzzle solving or multiple paths would certainly be welcome, but they do not appear in here. Even some degree of platform jumping or need for exploration for items or extra legions would have made the levels that much more interesting. As it is one level looks very similar to another, with only the types of monsters and the difficulty of them marking them as being different.

The monster design in Chaos Legion is a mixed bag. There are some very individual looking monsters throughout the game, each with their own weaknesses and strengths. Visually they are all well designed and generally quite fearsome. Using a particular legion will work well against some but not others. Unfortunately a lot of the monsters are not that dynamic when it comes to fighting. Sieg can hide behind a lot of them, generally with a legion distracting the monster from the front, and just hack away until the monster is killed usually without even needing to worry about being attacked.

The bosses in Chaos Legion are also very visually striking, although a lot seem to suffer from simplistic design, where often a pattern can easily be seen and exploited. Again harking back to a game such as DMC, there were some memorable bosses in that game that often needed a mix of strategies to beat. In Chaos Legion there are certainly some bosses that take quite a bit of thinking and skill to beat, but also a lot that leave you wondering if the boss was having a bad day. Some games could get away with a low boss count or some unimaginative design, but while playing through Chaos Legion the player will be wanting something more at the end of a level.

One of the major positives of Chaos Legion is its look. Set in a large medieval type castle, the game looks stunning. The cutscenes especially evoke some dark Gothic charm and certainly make the game stand out. The monsters and most of the bosses look great and fit in well in the overall look of the game. Saying that there are some problems when a horde of monsters is onscreen at once. It can be quite difficult to see what Sieg is doing, or distinguish between monsters and legions. The problem is minor however. With the simplistic gameplay players can quite often just resort to mashing the attack button without knowing exactly what is going on in the middle of the crowd.

The sound in Chaos Legion is passable although there are no stirring or memorable tunes to play the game to. Rather the game presents us with a generic kind of gothic-lite techno that is neither inspiring or offensive. Mostly though it is the sound of fighting that is heard, which can get quite monotonous as the player consistently mashes the buttons. Voice acting throughout the game is reasonably hammy and over-serious. This is yet another game that would have benefitted from the option to switch to the original Japanese voice actors.

In the end then Chaos Legion is a game that stops short of realising its potential. Like a stereotypical blonde the game is great to look at but closer inspection shows not a lot of depth. There is a lot of promise here which a well made sequel could certainly capitalise on and it is just a little unfortunate that it wasn't done for this game. It is also a game that seems to wear the player down. At the start where there is the promise of finding new legions the game is reasonably fun, but after a few hours a lot of the interest is lost with the game reduced to resembling a shallow button masher. In the end though there is quite a lot of game here, including a cool bonus character. Still worth looking at for action fans wanting to fight their way through hordes of enemies, but for others wanting a little more from their games it is only worth a rent.