Chaos Zero Nightmare - Wait there's a controversy?

Nov 4, 2025, 6:18:37 PM

Another game I started recently is Chaos Zero Nightmare from Smilegate, the same developer of Epic Seven which I only played very shortly as I didn't like the level of grinding required. I honestly didn't know much about it until it released (which is a bad note on their marketing team), but I was really surprised about the gameplay style, quite uncommon in gacha games.

A roguelike deck building RPG similar to Darkest Dungeon in theme? That's actually a crazy good combination if well executed.

Was it well executed? Well...let's start and say that the gameplay is fun and I really like the whole thrill of going around the Chaos trying to balance greediness of trying to get better cards and the risk of being gibbed by some monster or event.

Story was kind of boring after the initial bits and felt like it had no real direction in where it wants to bring us. The events were very predictable (see Judas and the whole sacrifice thing) and character design (both visually and personality wise) feels ultra lazy.

Plus there's like tons of bugs that, combined with the weird controversy going on in Korea right now doesn't bode well for the game as whole. The whole controversy was kind of surprising to me as I played the first four chapters of the game within a day or two and never checked social media during that time so when they started to talk about Owen or whatever I was like "wait, was there any controversial scene about him in the story? Did I miss something?".

Rin is best wife, just never let her cook

The company seems focused on trying to make good and try to regain ground, but some of their choices in the emergency stream were...interesting. Trying to make everything about the protagonist is kind of what Wuthering Waves is doing which honestly irks me at times. Wuthering Waves has the production quality to make up for it, but does this?

I'm still going to play it though, at least until the new wave of big games comes out (Arknight Endfield, Azure Promilia and so on). If by that time they resolved most of these issues then I'll keep it a stable game until it closes down shop.