Chaos Wars

A Massive Multiplayer Crossover Strategy RPG featuring characters from designers Idea Factory, Aruze, Red Entertainment and Atlus. It has an excellent combat system and features appearances by many interesting and beloved characters, but all anyone ever talks about is the ridiculously poor localization.

Should not be confused with Chaos War, a 2011 Marvel Comics Crisis Crossover.

There are lots of characters to choose from, and they all range from a variety of games:
 * Idea Factory
 * Spectral Tower
 * Spectral Force
 * Spectral Blade
 * Generation Of Chaos
 * Spectral Souls
 * Blazing Souls
 * Steady × Study
 * Rebirth Moon (also the game whose engine was modified for use in this game)
 * Mars of Destruction
 * Aruze
 * Shadow Hearts
 * Atlus
 * Growlanser
 * Red Entertainment
 * Gungrave: Overdose
 * Shinsengumi Gunrouden (a.k.a. Code of the Samurai)
 * ASCII Media Works
 * Dengeki Playstation (a gaming magazine)

The story opens with three Ordinary High School Students--the sourpuss Hyōma, the hyperactive Shizuku, and the cowardly Hayatemaru. They agreed to ditch school one day to investigate a strange cave that is said to hold mystical power. The story goes that if one prays there, his/her wish will be granted. However, when they reach said cave, something bizarre happens and they are sucked into a parallel dimension: a world called "Endia" ("the end of all worlds"). Endia is composed of a ring of islands, and oddly, has a sun that never sets. Hyōma is separated from his friends and encounters a purple-haired girl named Rin Sunroad. Rin is a "Gate Master"--she can operate special terminals that allow the transport of goods and even people. She tells him that he is a "Knight" (a person who is usually pulled from another world). Hyōma finds his friends early enough and must now gather an army of fellow Knights, and take part in a race to find the Keys, which may be the vital items that allows everyone to return to their own worlds--or even new Knights to join Hyōma's and Rin's cause.

Has a Spiritual Sequel of sorts in Cross Edge, another Massive Multiplayer Crossover involving Idea Factory with a Trapped in Another World premise. Zelos and Meu appear in both games.

Provides examples of:

 * All There in the Manual: The bookshelf in the hub provides info on each character, their Realize weapons, personal bio, origin, and even artwork.
 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have 5 units sortied on the field at any given time, out of your lot of 40+ units.
 * BFS
 * Blind Idiot Translation: This and painful, horrendous English voice acting is what got the game most of its attention.
 * The game Rebirth Moon was erroneously translated as "Reverse Moon". While リバース could be either "Rebirth" or "Reverse", this is a game that had a Latinised name visibly displayed on the its logo and in the address of its official website.
 * Bottle Fairy: Luwenelva
 * Butt Monkey: Hayatemaru
 * Casual Danger Dialogue: This may be one of the best (albeit unintentional) examples of this trope ever.
 * Charged Attack: Realize specials, which require a certain amount of SP and 1 S gauge to use.
 * Combination Attack: Group Attacks, which need both of the characters to be in range and all have 1 S gauge.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Hyōma
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Beating certain boss characters with a specific unit (sometimes the killing blow must have the unit in Realize mode) causes the boss character to join Hyōma's party after the fight is won.
 * Dual Wielding and Guns Akimbo
 * Dull Surprise: Doesn't even begin to describe how bad the acting is. It sounds like 9th grades being forced to read aloud from a book that none of them are interested in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bangt7d9vGA Thankfully, it's possible to switch to the Japanese voice track in the settings.
 * Everythings Better With Monkeys: Lubul
 * Fragile Speedster: Mika is quite fast and can strengthen Beyond the Grave if she participates in a combo attack with him, but it doesn't take much to knock her out of the fight.
 * Gender Blender Name: Nicole, as a result of using the original Japanese Shadow Hearts name.
 * Genki Girl: Shizuku
 * Goldfish Poop Gang / Quirky Miniboss Squad: Gaizan and Emily, Shelley, among others.
 * Global Currency: Dia
 * Guide Dang It: Standard fare for Idea Factory games and this one is no exception. Finding all possible playable units is no easy task and to get some of them requires counterintuitive or obscure actions, and there's no real hints anywhere.
 * Heel Face Downgrade: That boss character that had a ton of hit points and resilience? Joined your party? Well, the good thing is that you don't have to fight him or her anymore, but once on your side their incredible power is all but gone, as well as most of their hit points.
 * Hub Level / Player Headquarters: Hyōma and company find a summer house on a nearby island and lay claim to it because "no one's using it". Hyōma can speak to up to three characters that randomly spawn in the base, arrange his army, use the terminal to accept missions or shop/upgrade weapons and so on.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Zard the "old-fashioned" detective uses a Kingdom Hearts-esque giant key during Realize, Gepetto uses his trademark puppet Cornelia when in Realize, Rocketbilly Redcadillac uses his electricity-shooting guitar when in Realize, etc
 * Incurable Cough of Death: Sōji Okita has tuberculosis in his world, and will eventually die of it just like his real life counterpart.
 * Idiot Hair: Several characters, but most noticeably Rin, who can be quite clueless.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: There's about 60 characters, both original and crossover, to find and recruit.
 * Jungle Princess / Hot Amazon: Wruzel
 * MacGuffin: The Keys
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * Massive Multiplayer Crossover
 * Meaningful Name:
 * Mighty Glacier: Beyond the Grave is quite a damage sponge and hits hard, but slow. He can grow out of this and catch up with other units, with the right accessories.
 * Mismatched Eyes: Carmine.
 * Mirror Boss:
 * New Game Plus: Allows carryover of bookshelf entries, money, and any items/equipment you were not using/equipped with.
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero
 * No Export for You: On two levels.
 * First, concerning the other major game region. This game was not released in Europe, which is odd considering that Europe had in general received more games that featured the characters in Chaos Wars, and in particular the Spectral games. But then again, that might be the reason as copyright issues are always tricky with Crossover games.
 * Second, within North America. This game was sold as an exclusive to a video game retailer who only had branches in the United States.
 * Opposite Sex Clone:
 * Overrated and Underleveled: Many of the late-game recruits, like Shelley, Poly-tan, and especially whom you literally get right before the final battle.
 * Paper Fan of Doom: These are Shizuku's weapon of choice when in Realize mode. Outside of battle, she tends to playfully whack other characters with them.
 * The Power of Friendship: In a sense--some characters (Grave and Mika, Billy and Juji, Hyōma and his two friends, etc.) have a passive skill called "Friendship"/"Partner". It raises the attack power of the characters when they participate in combo attacks.
 * The Other Darrin: Quite a few characters.
 * Koyuki Saitō/Little Snow, since her first appearance in Spectral Force, had been consistently voiced by Makiko Ohmoto in just about all of her appearances in numerous subsequent games, but was voiced here by Amika Takahashi.
 * Tonaty of Spectral Force Radical Elements was voiced by Tomo Saeki. Ryō Ikezaki voices him in this game.
 * Ires of Rebirth Moon was voiced there Junko Minagawa, but here he is voiced by Katsuya Miyamoto.
 * Joachim of Shadow Hearts was done by Tomohiro Nishimura, and Nozomu Taiga does it here.
 * Garino of Gungrave, originally voiced by Shuichi Ikeda, is voiced here by Yuuto Kazama.
 * Rank Inflation: Higher grades at the end of a match yield more money and items.
 * Recursive Canon: Poly-tan's Realize weapon is... Chaos Wars.
 * Recursive Reality: Sort of. Since Shinsengumi Gunrouden is taken straight from the events of the eponymous real life group, Original Generation character Hyōma Kusaka of Like Reality Unless Noted knows who Sōji Okita is.
 * Rule of Cool: Your party can consist of an Ordinary High School Student who can generate a Flaming Sword, a guy who can transform into an EldritchAbomination, an undead gunslinger who carries a coffin on his back and wields guns akimbo, a demon girl who uses a big-ass scythe, and the Shinsengumi. Tell me that's not awesome.
 * Sinister Scythe: Hiro's Realize weapon is a large scythe, although she's not evil at all--she's practically one of the first few party members you get. Scythes/sickles are also a weapon class.
 * While Hiro is not evil, she IS ruthless and without mercy (she outright tells Hyoma she will kill him if he becomes a burden or, worse, an obstacle), and in her own canon she has a Super Powered Evil Side that revels in wanton destruction and cold-blooded murder due to it representing her repressed demonic nature. The scythe is more fitting than it appears at first.
 * Spell My Name With an S: Many Non-Original Generation characters, likely due to O3 Entertainment (the American localisation team) working from the original Japanese names rather than the pre-existing localised names.
 * Most noticeable with Shadow Hearts characters: Uru might be better known to American gamers as Yuri. Likewise, Nicole is based off the original ニコル, rather than the altered Nicolai.
 * Status Buff
 * Stripperiffic: Ovia the witch, who seems very aware of it.
 * Throw the Book At Them: Books/tomes are a weapon class.
 * The Quiet One: Beyond the Grave and Zeonsilt.
 * The Unexpected: This game getting a US port. At least half of the non-Original Generation characters have not made an appearance in any previous game for that region.
 * Trapped in Another World: Pretty much the whole premise.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
 * Vendor Trash: Conversion items only seem to exist for selling.