Chorus (Xbox Series X)
Chorus comes right out of the gate and tells you that Nara, the character you’re about to play as, is responsible for the deaths of billions. The opening scene fills the player in on the galactic cult known as the Circle and their desire to achieve harmony between all peoples in what they’ve come to call Chorus, and as their power grew, their methods grew more extreme to achieve this ideal. Nara was the Prophet’s right hand, and so when the day came to exterminate the planet of Nimika Prime as an example to the galaxy, she did as instructed. The game even shows she hesitates before unleashing the powerful Rift that dooms the planet, but it still has her go through with it only to regret it immediately after, taking off and putting that life behind her as she’s wracked with guilt and has lost faith in the Circle.
Rather than this science fiction space combat game trying to fully redeem Nara though, she seems quite cognizant of the fact that no matter what she does, any sort of redemption will likely never feel suitable compared to the enormity of her sins. Even when the game eventually reveals the Circle has devices that can alter the minds of people to indoctrinate them, Nara is still not given this out, the deaths weighing heavily on her conscious. However, having been the best pilot in the Circle and one who was able to tap into supernatural Rites to perform seemingly impossible feats, she also is uniquely poised to be capable of standing against the cult and possibly preventing any future pain. There is definitely fertile ground for looking at how to reconcile a person’s atrocious past if they are now doing tremendous good, but Chorus doesn’t really dig deep into the subject despite it being constantly brought up. The player constantly gets to hear Nara’s thoughts, represented by whispering that can unfortunately be hard to follow despite the subtitles since the space battles in the game aren’t quiet and can require a good amount of focus, but Nara’s thoughts do tend towards predictably undercutting any moment people praise her so she can beat herself up over her history once more. It is still a bit interesting to see how she interacts with people she recognizes from her past life and it does seem that perhaps the game didn’t want to slow things down too much for long term self-reflection and waxing philosophical, but her frequent comments can grow old when her mindset takes so long to shift.
Despite Nara’s stubbornness to develop, the supporting cast you do meet as you travel through a few locations across the galaxy does have some time to grow on you. During play you never leave your space ship, but frequent radio chatter helps to establish the setting and a bit of a clearer theme starts to emerge that makes the game’s choice of title make more sense. While Chorus is a utopic ideal for the Circle, the game does try to emphasize that harmony does not necessarily require uniformity and perfection. The place Nara flees to at the start of the game is a small independent space station set in the asteroid-filled rings of a planet, the people having to work together to get by in a lawless place of space and able to do so because isolation necessitates it. Many side quests will even emphasize how most areas are made up of full families of people who have grown up in these small communities scattered throughout the system, because while jump gates allow you to reach other populated areas, it’s still not easy to put down roots in a hostile reach of space. Chorus mostly leans into a somewhat grounded take on what galactic settlement might end up like, spaceships often having functional designs rather than sleek eye-catching appearances, and the gorgeous sights you find as you fly through space are often just the actual marvels the universe has to share. Admittedly, the plentiful asteroid fields and reserved architectural design does start to lose its sheen, but the Circle actually disrupts this unified aesthetic with impossibilities incongruous with this conceivable far future for humanity. Not only do they have more fierce and colorful designs for their fighter craft, but they lead to more unusual regions of space thanks to their utilization of the Faceless, abstract extradimensional beings whose influence allows for more unusual foes and locations.
To fight the Faceless and the Circle you’ll mostly rely on your sentient spacecraft, Forsa. Short for Forsaken, this space fighter actually has a personality of its own and is quite harsh on Nara as well, although the two also show why they were chosen to fight together back in the cult because they are on similar wavelengths. Forsa’s more direct nature is good at piercing through Nara’s self-doubt even if he doesn’t contradict it, his forceful personality able to spur her as needed. In battle, the player will be able to freely fly through space, battles sometimes involving things turning upside-down or sideways as you pursue other spacecraft with the same freedom of zero gravity movement. Weaving through space debris and zapping other fighters can look quite clean and impressive, especially since you are given many special maneuvers and techniques to increase how fluidly you can address even stacked odds as foes swarm around you like gnats. A drifting maneuver and teleport let you zip around the battlefield and quickly shift the angles you can fire on foes from, the player slowly acquiring more of these Rites to expand their combat capabilities even further. Even from the start you have special senses that make Nara uniquely equipped to find things in the expanse of space and not lose track of foes that can would otherwise could easily be lost since most battles happen in open unrestricted space.
The unfortunate thing about your many impressive and satisfying maneuvers though is the enemies you face often don’t really put them to the test. There are some enemies with front-facing shields or the kind of durability that makes them hard to crack otherwise without sustained aggression, but a lot of the smaller foes can feel fairly similar. There are some moments where a much larger spacecraft will have you flying all around and through it shooting down turrets and shield generators, but the shake-ups don’t feel substantial enough to inject new excitement into the action. You do still have quite a few different things to keep track of so they aren’t plain and boring bouts, the player gradually racking up three different weapon types in the form of gatling guns, lasers, and missiles. Each one has a different purpose in battle; missiles crack the durable hulls of tougher ships, lasers more effectively whittle away energy shields, and gatling guns are accurate and fast for good consistent damage since the other two weapons have limits on their firing speed and accuracy. Your own ship has energy shields as well that replenish if you avoid damage, but they are actually fairly small even with future upgrades and keeping your ship’s actual health safe still requires some smart flying and threat assessment. The fights may not feel too demanding when you’re in them, but that’s because the game does train you up to get pretty good at rapidly switching to the right weapons and using your Rites to dominate the opposition.
Chorus takes place across a few different open regions of space, not quite feeling like a full open world experience but rather a set of larger playgrounds so fights can cover more ground. There are still plenty of side activities to do beyond story missions in these locations, but it can be hard to differentiate which ones are worth doing since many have fairly plain hooks only to turn out to be ones with more unique fight situations or a decent story component. Some generic battles might crop up out in space, this likely meant to help you with the mastery system where performing certain actions will increase related skills like weapons becoming more useful the more they’re used. Money and equipment is often earned through these side activities, but sometimes the reward does feel disproportionately plain even for quests that help establish characters better or bring up some moral question you’ll be left to answer to determine the quest’s outcome. The gear you get to outfit Forsa does at least feel impactful, different weapons in the same class having clear power differentials and restrictions while you can also outfit your ship with modifications that impact things like when you can use your very limited mid-battle healing. Every now and again a side mission might put you into a different powerful ship or take on a new shape like a race, but it feels like too many basic ones will inevitably scare players off from seeking out all there is to do.
THE VERDICT: With even the creativity in the rare boss fights never feeling like it pushes Chorus’s marvelous flight mechanics far enough, this space adventure feels a weak host to what could have been a much grander and emotional epic. Nara’s difficult moral standing and a beautiful outer space setting could have done wonders with the right story, but thankfully Chorus doesn’t fumble this entirely as the broader communities and themes still present themselves effectively enough. Battles aren’t ever brainless because efforts are made to iterate on enemy design even if they can’t keep up with the impressive tools you’re granted, and there is some satisfaction in being such a capable fighter. Chorus needed to better prune out many of its plainer extra activities, a tighter focus feeling like it could have helped an otherwise well-crafted space shooter find its footing.
And so, I give Chorus for Xbox Series X…
An OKAY rating. Chorus does try to whip up challenges for its Rites, many of these supernatural abilities first given an area where they’re necessary and later fights like with the giant battleships benefiting from the flexibility they can afford if you choose to utilize them, but the combat can’t quite keep up with you as new enemy types roll out with changes that aren’t drastic enough to disrupt the difficulty. It’s not a cakewalk thankfully because of your need to manage many enemies at once and the way your weapons must be swapped between effectively, and the Faceless having their own unnatural tricks means their presence can push against you just enough that the action doesn’t end up becoming mundane. Chorus’s outer space setting is still easy to be wowed by, the deliberate hew towards realism not denying the player impressive sights even before the Faceless start to influence the visuals more and more, and when you can get swept up in the thrill of weaving through structures and asteroids in a battle, Chorus definitely shows it didn’t entirely squander all of its systems. Better segmenting the plainer side quests so you can find the more interesting and unique ones would do a lot to keep the game consistently interesting and worth exploring and a wider ranger of gear for your ship could also prove the kind of reward that makes you want to engage with them even further, but the story also feels like it needed to more strongly address Nara’s hang-ups in addition to its current focus on coexistence and cooperation.
Chorus has so much of what it would need to be a phenomenal space combat title. Superb graphics, responsive and satisfying controls, and a range of abilities and weapons that expand your options in a fight is already more than some games can achieve, but Chorus also shows why the right situations and opposition are necessary for such advantages to realize their potential. Chorus can still get far enough on its major successes, but we’re still missing out on the marvelous game it could have been if its incredible tools were present in more exciting and varied scenarios.