We can probably thank Kingdom Hearts a bit of the popularity of the mash up titles we've seen lately, even though there's quite a few that never make their way over here. The most recent release in the US that I can think of was the Namco "Tales of" game that released on PSP a little while back, which managed to be a pretty decent release. Chaos Wars falls into that same level of fun, and while I didn't quite recognize a large portion of the playable characters, I still had a good time actually playing the game.

You'll have around two-dozen characters to select from before the end of the game, which is a pretty good amount for most SRPG's. However, most parties will consist of 5 or so characters, and you'll want to really try and focus on a well-rounded group for most encounters. Also, taking a bit of a page from Persona (and Pokemon), your character abilities will randomly "level up", which allows them to transform into something else. Sometimes this can backfire, leaving you with duplicate skills, and if you don't want this evolution to occur you can choose to lock down your character abilities, which will stifle all transformations. However, I would just let these play out, since more often than not you'll be gaining and new, and better, ability.

The rest of the games mechanics play out in typical SRPG style. Your battlefields take on the form of grids, where you'll manipulate your party against another group of enemies. The only real variation I noticed was that you can move around as much as you want, instead of being limited to the typical 1-move/1 attack style usually seen in these types of games. If you opt to move around a lot, you'll just be adding to the wait queue for that characters next turn. Basically you're just sacrificing turns for moves, which can be handy if you're looking to get out of the action for a heal or two.

Outside of that Chaos Wars plays like most of your typical Japanese strategy titles. The game is definitely built with the fans of these various series in mind, and I can't imagine it would have the same amount of draw here as it would overseas. However, if you're a big fan of these niche style games, then it should be right up your alley. Nothing else about Chaos Wars really stands out, the graphics are 2D on a 3D plane, and look well enough, but the music isn't really exceptional stuff. The voice acting is something you'll be switching over to Japanese pretty quickly, and overall the game plays like what you'd expect. If you come into it with reasonable expectations though, it shouldn't let you down.