If your familiar with Japanese super hero shows where 5 people, usually teenagers, run around in coloured battlesuits to take on a latex monster and his waves of NPC goons, until the main bad goes super size at which point, with their powers combined, they find themselves in a giant robot that usually ends up in peril until the one shot win move thanks to the power of friendship, then you'll know what to expect with Chromo Squad.
The game follows the careers of five struggling actors who start out forming their own show, only for things to end up all too real whereby they become the very heroes they were playing. The core gameplay involved recording episodes, which are between 1-3 scenarios, where they're out in the field taking on the monster of the week by moving around a grid set in an ever changing suburban or country scene. This often involves taking on a kaiju monster (the merging of man and beast) while dealing with his army of fodder. Each hero has their own abilities, and they can work together to help boost jump one another around the field or combine attacks, the ultimate being when all five group together for a flashy super strike. Other rounds involve surviving 5-10 turns against an endless wave of spawning trash, and then, of course, there's the giant robot encounter where you go one on one with the monster atop a city miniature that eventually becomes the real city. All of them have director goals to target, which if achieved, score you bonus audience that then translates into money.
For the most part the gameplay is solid. It's not overly complex, but the huge variety of monsters (there's got to be at least 20-30) all have unique abilities that manage to keep the gameplay fresh. There's also a base management sim in between episodes, whereby you can spend the cash and items made from the screenings to update your studio, buy advertising, respond to fan emails, and improve your fighters gear either through the shop bought items or crafting them yourself with such fabled materials like plasticine, duct tape, and cardboard. All told the game has clearly been made with a lot of love for the source material it's spoofing, and if you're familiar with it you'll likely have a huge smile throughout.
The screenings are split up into seasons, whereby you do 3-7 recordings and then get the big finale. Most of these finales aren't much different from standard events, but they do forward the story and then result in a mass upgrade to all your purchasable items and the small talent tree each of your fighters get to distinguish them in their role. There are five seasons in all, and an event at the end of season four locks you into one of three season 5 endings, so there's a little bit of replayability. The game also has a New Game+ mode whereby once you've completed it, you can restart with your same team and new items.
It is worth noting there are a fair number of bugs in the game. None of them are gamebreaking, but I found a fair few occasions whereby encounters didn't reset their abilities/director's goal hits after a defeat, Sometimes characters ended up standing on top of one another and being removed from the game. It can be hard to target ground squares when things are in front of them, this being particularly bad in the bottom right hand corner thanks to the description windows popping up there. Other than a bit of frustration, though, most of this had the side effect of making the game easier. I played it from the top difficulty off the get go, and while it was certainly challenging in places, most of the difficulty came from not upgrading gear to the latest stuff.
Other areas also feel a bit rushed or lacking polish. I couldn't find much reason to craft items over buying them from the shop, and the robot fights while fun, didn't have much of a challenge to them largely because I was able to defeat most enemies without them getting more than 1-2 shots back on me. The New Game+ also doesn't seem to have been as balanced as the original game, with most encounters bar one (which I'll get to) being mostly a pushover when your team have all their abilities and gear. They went the route of randomising monsters and director goals, but often times this led to situations whereby notes simply couldn't be completed (kill the last enemy with a team attack in events to survive for x turns, thus there never being a last enemy to hill), and later fights where additional kaiju come in to challenge you getting those mini-bosses replaced with standard enemies, completely trivialising the encounter.
As for that last encounter ... for some reason, having gone through the game to see the third and final ending, the final bosses were pumped to such a stupid level that I had to go to a forum to see if I was doing something wrong. When most bosses were ranging in the 12-15k HP, this guy comes in at almost 120k, and is summoning in monsters with 40-50k. He was also one shotting everyone he attacked, forcing me to turn the difficulty down to casual just to have a chance against. Even on casual, he had almost 80k HP, and once you beat him, you then go into a final final boss who had another whooping 70k HP. All told, these final two battles took almost 3 and a half hours to whittle down, which is insane in a game that you can't save mid battle, so if you have to leave it or fail you're forced to start over. It does lead to some epic battling when you have literally 30-40 enemies running around on the screen. It also led to lag in the final stages, which is insane for a pixel art game. It surprised me, for sure, but I can't say it was in a good way. If you're an achievement hunter then be warned, there's pain ahead at the end of this.
All told, it's a fun little game for the price. You'll get a good 20-30 hours entertainment even if you just play through the story once. But I would say you need to have some familiarity and fondness for the source material to get the most out of it. It's not a game that's going to make you a fan of Japanese superhero robot squad shows, it's a game made for pre-existing fans of such shows.
