I want every reader here to think of their two favorite game genres. Now, think how amazing it would be if they merged these two genres into one clever and well thought out titles. Don’t you think it’d be one of your most anticipated titles of the year that would just breeze to the top of your letter of demands to Santa Claus? The other day, I was surprisingly gifted with a review token that did that very same for me. It was a code for an XNA game called Chu’s Dynasty that mixed the cleverness of indie games with the addictiveness of fighting games. The big question is, can a $3 XNA title deliver the euphoric genre combination that it should?
Chu’s Dynasty Review
Developer: Tribe Toy Games
Price: 240 MS Points
Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed)
Chu’s Dynasty is about the three oldest immortals, Heta, Noah, and Viotale who must band together to heal the deteriorating world. However, their history with each other will not allow them to stop warring against each other. One day, Dr. Chu steps in and tries to convince the immortals to cooperate, but it doesn’t take him long before he gets caught up in the wars and forgets his true mission. As you fight through the campaign, you’ll learn how the gods were born. Confession time? I obtained that information via the game’s website. This story is presented through the many text screens that you will end up skipping. Don’t worry, like all fighting games, it’s just the premise for the characters and really doesn’t matter much at all.
At its heart, Chu’s Dynasty is a fighter. It’s a fighter that takes the basics of the average fighter and blends them with the overall play style of Super Smash Bros presented to the player via the art style of an Oriental water color painting. To say the least, it is very ambitious and it is, indeed, very pretty. As pretty as the title is, however, the animations don’t necessarily agree with the art style. Whenever I would hit an enemy in Chu’s Dynasty, my character’s movement didn’t feel like it fit the action I was performing and, overall, felt awkward rather than fluid. The friend I kidnapped and forced to try the multiplayer with me even agreed on this. Furthermore, the game has only a few soundclips for each character, and they are exhausted and repeated extremely quickly in battles to the point of annoyance everything you. As bold as this title is, I was hoping for a tad bit more polish.
The real star of the show here really is the fighting. As previously stated, you can play as one of four characters on one of numerous stages that closely resemble the ones in the Super Smash Brothers franchise. Don’t be fooled though, this game actually plays very much like a standard 2D fighter such as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. Although, that is the game’s main issue, at least it was for me. Since the fighting in this game, and 
there’s a lot of it with it being a fighting game and all, is really rather simple. Basically, you’ll run around the map and strike your opponent quickly by pressing a face button, run away, rinse and repeat. There are a few combos, but I was able to best the AI rather easily just by button mashing or by the using the above tactics, even on the harder difficulties. To me, that lack of complexity in each character just made the game a tad boring to me and didn’t provide the needed determination for any player to feel the need to get better with their preferred character.
Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy parts of this games. Fights could get chaotic when their were four characters on screen, and the art style resulted in very pretty looking backgrounds as well as characters. However, the simplicity in the characters and the fights themselves just made it kind of boring.
The Final Word
Chu’s Dynasty is an ambitious title, but one that will have any fan of fighting games leaving rather disappointed. If you’re going to have a few friends over for a night of gaming, you could have some fun with this one, especially with the price tag. On the flip side, if you just want a crazy fighter, you might want to just shell out the couple extra dollars for Marvel vs Capcom 2. I will say this, I’m intrigued to see what this developer puts out next.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
Mr. Cobb will never write an indie game review that is this long ever again
