CHAOS: TQFR Review

So, late is better than never, right?

CHAOS: The Quest for Redemption follows the tale of Muna, the wandering newborn goddess of Mentality. As the title indicates, her primary goal is Redemption, not for herself, but for the entire reality which she inhabits. ‘Gods’ in this setting, rather than being responsible for their domains existing, are instead born of the sapient experience of seeking and understanding. These enlightenments, called Truths, are the essence of (and base of power for) the gods who bear and are borne of them. This setup allows for a diverse range of god and mortal characters alike, with a very ‘rule of cool’ setting that still feels cohesive under the general premise of a torn world and innumerable divine domains, with elements from sci-fi, mythology, and fantasy from all over the world creating instantly memorable setpieces, enemies, and allies.

This quest absolutely drips with effort. From the intricate j-rpg inspired combat mechanics to the extensive worldbuilding to the colorful cast of unique and interesting characters, there would be a veritable mountain of high-quality, high time investment material even if CHAOS were a purely written experience. However, and I cannot stress enough how impressive this is, a vast majority of the posts, including multiple ones within a given update, contain fully colored illustrations of the events happening on the page. As a person who’s played with far lower effort drawings for one of my quests, this is a genuinely staggering amount of extra work considering the level of detail in Levelman’s style. This is far from wasted effort, either, as having a visual reference for the events and characters playing out in the quest really help to differentiate the diverse cast of characters from each other and allows the reader to maintain a strong mental image of the events even when it would be clunky or misplaced to provide a thorough description.

The narration of the quest is also unique, done in first person (rare for a quest) and with dialogue conveyed more like a script than conventional prose, CHAOS maintains a unique reading experience, again similar in many respects to playing an rpg, with Persona being the most obvious influence in regards to the mechanics and naming of the combat.

That being said, the mountain of work put into CHAOS is also in some ways its biggest flaw, at least upon re-reading it without being able to participate: there are a lot of infodumps, especially towards the beginning, which makes initial investment a little bit tricky. It gets better later on, especially once you’ve read enough to really care about the world and its inhabitants, but lengthy exposition is something of a mainstay of the quest. Reading through the combat segments is a bit of a slog as well (though helped by the pictures) which cannot be skipped over thanks to some important dialogue happening between turns. To be clear, I think that the combat is actually very well done when you’re actually playing, there’s depth and strategy while still keeping the narrative interwoven with the more game-like turn based battle system, but I’d be lying if I said it was particularly enjoyable reading through them.

Make no mistake though: all nitpicks aside, CHAOS is an exceptional quest and absolutely worth your time if you enjoy RPGs at all, which I can only imagine the average reader/player of this board would be. You’re genuinely missing out if you haven’t at least given the first thread a shot.