Chorus

The game is too busy telling you about its super cool OC for it to allow you to play its admittedly very fun combat for more then a few minutes at a time. It gets very annoying

It's quite a unique game, which combines arcade space combat with lots of dialogues and small stories. So somehow to me it felt more like an open world action game. It's just so rare (at least from what I've seen) to have a space combat game with that kind of quests and stories. Interestingly enough, the strong sides of this game are also its weaknesses. The combat is fun, but VERY repetitive, even if you use all the arsenal at your disposal. There's A LOT of talking, but it's mostly forgettable. The story is actually good enough, but it's just so long that only 16% of people who bought the game finished it (according to Steam achievements). Weirdly enough, the story reminds me Hellblade a lot and it's not because the main character is often whispering to herself. It's a story about psychological struggle, the existential crisis, the questions about what defines consciousness and how much of all of that is real is quite questionable at some points too. But the delivery is a bit bland, some voice acting could be done much better, and the writing could also be more creative. Unlike the mechanics, which due to the lack of detailed explanation often requires a bit of time to figure out. Especially if you take breaks between the sessions. But if you're patient enough it all becomes a second nature fast. What really made me get into it though is that this game is a hidden VR gem. It doesn't have native VR support, unfortunately, but it works very well with UEVR mod. Not only it gives the advantage of being able to look around, especially during those chaotic fights, where you are surrounded by enemies from all directions, but it's simply stunning in some places. Don't expect too much diversity in the surroundings, but there were quite a few memorable places. And when you actually get the real sense of scale it's just so much more fun to explore. It took me 26 hours to finish, but I completed every single quest I could find and I rarely skipped the open world random encounters. So don't take it as a measurement, can be definitely done much faster.

SCORE: ★★★★☆: Loved It +Gorgeous environments and fairly strong graphics +Responsive and satisfying controls +Unique powers that add a fun twist to a flight combat game +Interesting and varied enemy types -Story loses focus halfway through and has an aggressively bad ending -Mission variety gets very thin for how long the game is -Only the protagonist gets a character model, everyone else is relegated to portraits, which diminishes emotional impact Chorus' protagonist, Nara, has done terrible things. It's something she wrestles with, complicated by the fact that doing these terrible things has given her incredible talents, both as a pilot and at more esoteric, supernatural things. This fact rests heavily in her heart; after all, does doing good with power begotten by sin redeem the sinner? It's a hell of a question, and one that the robust campaign of this story-driven space shooter doesn't quite answer -- but the game is still a rather good time. Chorus kicks off with Nara - formerly a high-ranking officer of a cult called The Circle - making amends for the time she (checks notes) destroyed an entire planet in an act of superhuman zeal. She's doing this by assisting a secretive enclave of refugees on the edge of space, largely made up of survivors from attacks by the very same cult that she herself used to be part of. To nobody's surprise (I'm not being glib, even the characters have been anticipating this), The Circle begins to encroach on this sanctuary, and Nara realizes that doing little acts of good is no longer enough - if she wants to redeem herself, she has to stop The Circle once and for all. It's a pretty good premise, and for about half the game, Chorus does plenty to capitalize on it. Since the dialogue is mostly through non-animated portraits, Nara's inner thoughts are established by her whispering to herself; the player gets a good look at her personality. Truth be told, I initially struggled to sympathize - her conflict about outing herself as a former genocidal imperialist felt like pretty small beans compared to the good she could do if she got over it - but to my pleasant surprise, one of the other major characters, her sentient ship itself, is the first person to call her out about this. I think mileage will vary based on personal tastes, but I was actually pretty pleased to see the narrative grapple with how much Nara would have to do to redeem herself for a crime as major as planetary genocide, and if she's even worthy of it in the first place. Sadly, the second half of the plot takes things pretty far off the rails. I'll avoid spoilers, but the best way to describe it is that as the scale of the conflict grows and other factions get involved, the personal stakes fall away towards an increasingly unfocused exploration of Nara's powers and how she can restore them to their full potency. By the end of the game, I was fully tapped out of the story, largely because - while I certainly can't call what happens generic by any stretch - it became so abstract that it didn't seem to be saying anything anymore and was no longer engaging with its better themes. Still, while I would have liked the story to be a little stronger for how much time is spent on it, space combat games tend to live or die by their core gameplay, and it's here that Chorus shines. The fundamentals are pretty familiar for dogfighting enthusiasts: Nara pilots her spaceship and takes down squadrons of enemies, often while juggling other objectives such as escorting defenseless cargo freighters or retrieving salvage crucial to the enclave. During the tutorial, I was struck by how awkward the combat felt, but once Nara got her real ship, Forsaken (the one I mentioned before that calls her out on her ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) it all made sense: the brief prologue is a masterful feint, an example of how limited everyone else is and how terrifying Nara is by comparison when she's at the helm of the vessel made for her. Nara's a great pilot, but being great isn't always enough when outnumbered ten to one or having to challenge capital-class ships in just a fighter. What really sets her apart is her ability to tap into the Void. At first, she's only able to use this for sensory input, 'pinging' her surroundings not unlike living radar, but as the game progresses and her relationship with Forsaken deepens (alongside recovering some of her willingly excised memories), she picks up some incredible moves. Nara and Forsaken can maneuver in ways others simply can't. Near-instant 180s? Child's play, how about drift maneuvers by transforming the ship on the fly, or fully teleporting behind an enemy and blasting it apart with rockets? Chorus gives Nara these abilities - alongside a decent array of weapons, with emphasis more on quality than quantity and each loadout being distinct - and then challenges her by making sure they're necessary. It's only a few hours before stranger and stronger enemies than simple fighters show up. On top of the capital ships that serve as minibosses I mentioned, there's esoteric beings from the same Void that Nara pulls her powers from that can match her a bit better and bring the numbers to keep things tense. I was consistently pretty happy with the game's difficulty curve, and even the dreaded escort missions typically were well-designed enough that I never got frustrated due to suicidal friendly AI. Really, my only complaint with Chorus besides the story losing its way is that - both due to that narrative and in terms of simple mission design - it starts to drag by the end. If the plot held up better, I wouldn't mind so much that the fights started to blend together, but unfortunately, repetitive side quests and a long chain of flying between distant objectives in the last chapters means that Chorus' final verse lingers on a bit of a sour note. Despite this, it's an extremely strong and well-designed game where it counts, and I highly recommend it for its core combat alone, especially if you pace yourself and don't binge it all at once.

Great aerial combat and solid visuals, BUT the game collapses everywhere else: A catastrophic narrative failure. Every character, location, faction, and concept is thrown at you with zero explanation. Dialogue feels like listening to two strangers discuss a universe you’ve never been introduced to. You won’t understand a single line, and the game doesn’t care. Wild, nonsensical difficulty spikes even on the lowest settings. One mission is a breeze, the next is a brick wall. Quest sequencing is broken. Multiple missions appear simultaneously even though they must be done in a specific order, guaranteeing progression glitches. Relentless, exhausting internal monologues. Character never stop talking, over-explaining nothing while under-explaining everything. After the first map, the game devolves into busywork. The initial excitement fades fast, replaced by repetitive tasks and a sense of grinding for no reason.

Fantastic voice acting, fine graphics, fun combat that progressively gets more intense with new abilities/mechanics, interesting story, and good questing! However, the pacing and tracking of quests is awful! I have to constantly stop my ship to let dialouge play out because there will somehow be main quest, side quest, banter, and spontaneous quest dialouge qued up that needs to play out, and getting to a location will cut it off. Quests can sometimes be hard to track and VERY finiky! Needing to be within an unspecified distance in a following mission and failing constantly because the game refuses to tell you the parameters. They want you to follow close, but not too close, and NOT behind asteroids despite it specificlly telling you to stay out of line of sight. They also mapped the "sense" button to the same button as "refuse quest", leading to many accidental side quest refusals, forcing me to leave the area and come back later to actually finish it. Very annoying! If you think you won't mind that, there's plenty of fun to be had and it's definitly worth the sale price of $2.50 USD. If you think that would annoy the eff out of you, maybe skip this one.

game breaking bug if u start from save demo game and get locked out of central rim but central station is opened. this has happened to many people and devs never fixed the bug. u have to restart from new game. autosave only saves one file and autosaved saved while stuck in central rim without activating the jump gate.. so f u devs for never fixing this...

SOLO COMPRAR EL JUEGO SI TENES JOSTICK, SI TIENE UNA OFERTA DEL 90% Y SI TE GUSTA QUE TE ESCUPAN EN LA CARA Y TE SIENTAS AVERGONZADO DE SER HOMBRE El juego es un soplo de aire fresco ya que manejar tu nave por el espacio libremente es una experiencia satisfactoria, personalizarla, poner tus armas, el aspecto, tener carreras espaciales contra otras naves es muy buena primicia, el problema es la direccion que el propio juego lleva. Una lastima que el puto sistema J haya intercalado tanto en la industria del videojuego, como veran; salio en el 2021, el punto maximo de la ingeniera social woke. No se por que generalmente estos tipos de mensajes subliminales se encuentran en videojuegos sobre el espacio exterior (Como por ejemplo THE EXPANSE, hecho por Telltale), supongo que ya te quieren meter en la cabeza que en el futuro todos los hombres seran unos inutiles y sumisos de mierda. -La protagonista es una mujer masculinizada -Todos los capitanes de las naves son mujeres -El unico personaje hetero blanco es tu jefe pero es solo una cara visible y una marioneta ya que cada vez que toma malas decisiones (que suele ser gran parte del tiempo) sus cagadas las tiene que arreglar su esposa: una mujer negra. -Hay una escena de 2 hermanos, una mujer y un hombre, adivinen quien tiene el arquetipo de valiente, talentosa y extrovertida y quien tiene el arquetipo de inexperimentado, ingenuidad, sumision; si, ya saben la respuesta. Y para que quede bien claro que los hombres solo estorban entre tantas mujeres talentosas que pilotan naves, la mismisima protagonista lo manda al chico a que se quede en casa a cuidar a su familia porque es muy peligroso para el que se convierta en piloto de caza; osea que los pocos huevitos que le quedan a los hombres en este juego para hacer algo para salvar la galaxia, son saboteados por las propias mujeres. Ah, y los piratas y todos los villanos son hombres, todas las mujeres son buenas. Algunos les parecera una queja exagerada y extremista pero solo estoy DESCRIBIENDO lo que pasa en el juego, no es una opinion, es la realidad. En otro momento pensaria que simplemente querian quedar bien con una minoria que trasladado a los videojuegos es aun mayor la diferencia entre la gran parte de la masa societaria que consume videojuegos y la minoria en cuestion pero en la actualidad solo me queda decir que el plan de los J ha salido tal cual esperaban. El pintor austriaco tenia razon.

Very fun game! The graphics are pretty great and combat becomes more and more fun as you progress. At first you are pretty weak and die easily, though. I didn't think I would enjoy a space combat shooter, but this game encouraged me to try more games like this.