For a game full of side characters and citizens in need of assistance, cutthroat pirates and sinister cults, Chorus feels alarmingly lonely. Part of which comes from the method in which most of its key players will never be seen save for that ships they get around in, that might been employed by if their rides were more memorable. It’s and in part a problem of perspective, where your personal experience – also limited to a pulled-back look at your ship – makes the spaces around you feel like model representations of places greater than a living, breathing world. Enemies especially amount to nothing more than the UI markers mounted on them that tell you where and how alive they are.
It’s not that an indie-scale spaceship shooter will need a terribly deep or detailed world or ridiculous production values, but it’s clear that Chorus is attempting to tell a tale with nuance and depth as well as in these attempts it constantly pops up against itself. The writing simply doesn’t shine well enough to make the format work, exacerbated by stilted dialogue and characters whose motivations swing wildly from one direction to another with little context. Nara and Forsaken’s joint personal journeys feel hamfisted and betrayed by angsty exchanges and frequent tonal shifts.
It’s disappointing since the dual-protagonist concept works very well when it really works and provides the game a pleasant point-of-difference towards the many other titles it cribs from. There are lessons taken from games like Returnal and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice informing Nara’s design and arc here, however it misunderstands the important qualities of those stories and draws only from their most surface-level ideas.
That said, the symbiosis of Forsaken’s engineering and Nara’s spiritual awakenings does make for any nice twist on other spaceship combat experiences. Controlling Forsaken can get awkward in the heat of the moment, but once you receive the hang of it you’ll be boosting and drifting through tight spaces like a champ. Throw in some light puzzles that use Nara’s abilities to detect points of interest and teleport short distances and also you end up with a number of genuinely cool sequences.
Combat itself makes use of both Forsaken’s trifecta of weapon types and Nara’s Rites, offering up enemy ships that have set attack patterns and weaknesses that need to be countered with the right tools. Certain ships will shield themselves in the front for instance, meaning players will have to make use of the Rite of the Hunt to quickly teleport behind them and unleash a barrage of missiles to interrupt through their tough armour. The strategic play is solid, but basic skirmishes are let down by messy controls, a lack of lock-on and also the constant have to dip from the action to recharge your shields thanks to often unavoidable barrages of fireside from unseen foes.
These moments are extremely few and far between though, sandwiched amidst dull fetch quests and inane conversations with featureless NPCs in open space. When Chorus isn’t forcing you to fly dozens of kilometres to each arbitrary new mission point and listen to its one-dimensional characters prattle on about things you won’t care about, it’s applying open-world game tropes that died off an era ago like escort and tailing sequences.
There are a few standard RPG elements for example weapon and armour enhancements and mods, and proficiencies that grow through use, however they muddy the allure of Chorus’ skill-based action. The sport even appears to recognise this because it force-feeds you upgrades at set intervals to keep pace using its difficulty curve. There just aren’t enough opportunities for players to form their own strategies and masteries because of the game’s arcade-y combat and enemies with clearly-defined weaknesses. Over a game like Everspace 2 with its hefty loot and levelling systems, what’s here feels an excessive amount of like an afterthought.
Chorus does supply a handsome slice of space to understand more about though, the number of expansive sectors open to navigate through packed with impressive vistas and intriguing sights. Ancient structures birthed by old and terrible beings are among the most interesting places to behold. As mentioned it is betrayed somewhat by perspective, because the many ships and human habitats you visit tend to lack personality or detail purely because of their scale. The overall presentation is decent though, and the few cutscenes where we get to determine Nara are very nicely rendered and acted. There’s a rudimentary photo mode to snap those gorgeous views of space or heated combat moments.
