The Chant Game Review
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The Chant is the first original IP from the studio Brass Token. The team is led by veterans of the industry who worked on games like Sleeping Dogs and Bully. The game has been in development since 2017, but the team decided to skip last-gen systems and make a truly terrifying experience for only current-gen consoles and PC. I'm glad that developers and publishers are starting to move on from the PS4 and Xbox One era. It's been two years, and it's time to start pushing the new systems instead of trying to make the same games for the older ones.
As I said above, it took me just under seven hours to finish the game the first time I played it before it came out. I didn't look at the trophies first, so I missed some collectibles and secrets, but that doesn't matter because you have to play the game more than once to get the trophy. but let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'll talk more about this later...
Such a lovely place to unwind, I'm sure nothing bad will happen...
Jess is the main character. After her sister died in a tragic accident, she felt guilty and sad about what happened that day. Even though it's hard for her to move on, her best friend Kim, who was with her when she died, has done so by joining a community on a remote island. So, she has been asking Jess to join her so that she can relax, gain wisdom, and get rid of her inner demons. Even though she didn't want to go at first, she finally gives in and heads to this so-called "paradise island," hoping to get away from the busy city and clear her mind. But maybe she should have stayed home instead...
Jess meets the other people who live on the island when she gets there. They are a small group of troubled people who were invited by Tyler, the leader of the Prismatic Science group. After she changed into the white clothes she was given (not the best idea, given how bloody things are about to get), everyone sat down, put on a different colored crystal, and began to do "The Chant." Even though everyone but Jess doesn't want to admit it, it's clear that this is a cult that worships and does rituals in support of this "Prismic Science."
Something goes wrong, and instead of giving our small group of "non-cultists" spiritual enlightenment by charging their crystals and tuning them to the energy they give off, Hell is let loose on the island in the form of The Gloom, not to be confused with the shy Gloom from Pokemon. Now, the island is separated by colored mists that feed off negative energy and hide nasty creatures that would love to eat Jess. As a civilian who isn't trained or ready for battle, it's up to you to explore the island, fight off horrifying monsters, and find a way to bring peace back to the once-peaceful, definitely-not-a-cult retreat.
What are these animal-like things with human-like heads?
The Chant is a single-player horror action-adventure game that is played from the third-person perspective. It features a compelling narrative, a plethora of challenging puzzles, and even a survival aspect, as some of the weapons can only be used once. Most of the time, you can choose to stay and fight the evil beings who want to eat your soul, or you can run away like Forrest Gump. But once you make eye contact with one of the big, bold, and beautiful badass bosses, there's nowhere to hide, so you better be ready for some fun back-and-forth combat between a person trying to stay alive and a bloodthirsty demon.
If you're not facing a ghost made of flies, a giant toad that eats people, or a demonic human wearing the skull of a dead animal, you're probably getting lost or trying to solve a puzzle. Let's start with the puzzles, which I really enjoyed. They're not like most adventure game puzzles because they all have to do with the environment, and none of them were hard to solve. There's never a dull moment in The Chant, whether you're looking for different shapes to put together to make a big key, picking the right plants to make weed killer, or shooting lights into mirrors and then adjusting them to light up other mirrors while fighting enemies.
I'm not embarrassed to say that I got lost more than once while playing The Chant, just like I did when I played Someday You'll Return. Even though there are signs everywhere that point you to the important landmarks and areas, and even though there is a (slightly confusing) fast travel system later in the game, I still couldn't find the big dome where your friends are hiding. There are no in-game virtual markers, pointers, or guides because the game is meant to be realistic and not hold your hand. This means you have to remember where you've been and have a good sense of direction.
Let's start with the obvious: Jess isn't a fighter, she's not secretly Batgirl, she probably doesn't take self-defense classes in her hometown, and she wasn't raised by Japanese Ninja Masters from the time she was a child. So, her fighting isn't as smooth as it could be because she's just trying to stay alive and not letting out her inner warrior, who's just waiting to open a can of whoop-ass. This appealed to me because it gives the impression that you're playing a regular person who is terrified for their life, waving around makeshift weapons and hoping for the best.
With a hand-made weapon like a burning stick or a magical witch stick (which is shorter and restores "MP" when it hits something), you can do a normal or heavy swipe by tapping or pulling the right trigger all the way down (resistance in the adaptive triggers is used). Once you have collected different colored crystals, you can use six magical skills, such as pushing enemies away with the Force, making spikes pop up all around you, and calling up a bunch of flying creatures to attack people you don't like. You can also make a few things that you can throw to stun, burn, or annoy anyone who gets in your way.
Even if you're not a fighter but a lover, there are a few ways to protect yourself. With a tap of the button, you can do the most powerful move in this game and in Worms, which is to gently push the enemies. Jess doesn't carry a knife, mop, or frying pan, which is annoying. If you don't pick up every branch and bush you see, you'll end up in a fight without any weapons and only be able to push enemies out of the way so you can run away. You can also roll dodge, which is funny because Jess always falls over if you roll backwards or at weird angles since she's just a regular person and not a trained superhero.
Your mind will be clean after meditation, but not your clothes.
My gun has broken!
I hate weapons that have a durability meter and/or a set number of uses before the main character decides they don't want to use it anymore and throws it to the ground, even if they're in the middle of a battle with an unholy spawn of Satan! The Chant doesn't get a free pass here. As we've already said, there's nothing scarier than having to move to a new area that's probably full of ghouls and not being able to find any weapons or resources.
This didn't happen too often, though, because the plants and sticks placed against rocks and walls always let you know when a fight was about to start. But at first, the Chant is very tight with its resources. You can only carry a small number of each crafting material and item you make, and every weapon needs two different crafting materials. I was playing the game on easy mode because horror games always make me angry or anxious, so I couldn't imagine how hard it would be on hard mode. I guess I'll spend most of my time running away!
not good for your mental health
You have to worry about more than just breaking your flaming branch, which sets enemies on fire and even leaves flames in the mouth of the giant frog. You have to watch out for your mind and sanity as well. As you move through the foggy gloom patches, once you have the right crystal, your mind will start to drop until you go crazy and can't attack anymore until you get to a safe place and meditate. So, you should always be aware of your weapon's durability, your mind, and your health. You can restore all of these with items you find, restoration crystals, and the meditation I already mentioned.
Meditation is fun. When Jess isn't in battle or in the gloom and she's holding the cross, she goes into a state of pure happiness and hums as her mind grows. But this costs you some of your crystal power (MP), so you have to decide if staying sane is more important than being able to use your magic. Ginger is the only way to get your health back, and you can only carry a few at once. In my playthrough, I died twice because I didn't have any ginger to put on my open wound. In this world, knobs of ginger are hard to find.
Just look at this; it amazes me so much!
I'm in charge!
Even though Jess is just a regular peasant, she has access to a skill tree. As you look around the dark and spooky island, you'll often find jars of prismatic crystals, which are basically skill points. You can use the skill points to make Jess' defense or attack better, increase the number of certain items she can hold, or even change what happens when you roll and push perfectly, such as automatically stunning the enemy.
As you walk around the creepy and isolated resort, there are a lot of things to keep an eye out for. The founder left behind a number of film reels that can be watched on one of the island's dozen or so projectors. I really like this projector, and it's my second favorite after the ones in Control. Why? If you stand in front of the projected video, you not only make a shadow, but the video also seems to be on your body. I know most people won't care, but that is a great visual effect that makes you feel like you're really in the game.
But why are Control's still the best projectors? Well, these do the same thing as the ones above, but you can also pick them up and throw them around, watching the video project onto any surface the light hits. In the Chant, Jess doesn't feel the need to throw them around.
The other important thing to collect is notes.They give you more information about each character and why they're there or what happened to them in the past. Again, like Control, you don't have to find and read these, but you should because they give you more information about each character and the events that are happening. I only missed one note on my first playthrough without a guide. In each place, there are also books called "bestiaries" that describe the monsters that live there.
I love everything about the Chant's enemies. They're creepy, twisted, and disturbing, and there are a good number of them. Each area seems to have a new type or variation of enemy, and the above bestiaries can help you figure out what weapons to use and how they'll try to attack you. I really liked the giant frogs and toads in the mines. When you hit them with a flame weapon, their whole mouths catch on fire, and the light shines through their eyes as they get heartburn.
As you go deeper into the gloom-infected island, enemies get stronger and smarter. Jess seems to be afraid of flies (I'm not sure if that's been explained), so it makes sense that she's being followed by something that looks like a person but is made of hundreds of flies. If you attack it with a weapon, it will only be stunned for a short time, so you can't stand around and think for too long. You'll also have to dodge, roll, and push your enemies, who will try to bite you from all sides as you get further into the game.
So, if I liked the common beasts, what did I think of the bosses? I thought they were all well-made, made you think about how you were going to deal with them, and looked great (especially the last one!). You couldn't just rush in and start beating people up; sometimes you had to use the environment to your advantage or wait for a chance to do so.
The Chant uses features of the PlayStation 5 that you won't find anywhere else. First of all, you can track some of the collectible trophies so you can see how many you still need to find. But they've decided to list them as a percentage, so even though there's a trophy for killing 15 of a certain enemy, the tracker shows it as being out of 100. Also, there's no PS Plus help or breakdown of what items you've actually collected and where. This is the exact opposite of A Plague Tale: Requiem, where the tracking and help system is much more detailed, as it is in The Last of Us Part One. I still like that the developer used the feature, though.
Last but not least, there are activity cards, or there would have been if PlayStation hadn't been so annoying and put them all together as a "continue" button. Sad to say, The Chant has the same "problem" that almost every other game has: the developers kept the developer and publisher logos even when "resuming activity." This is annoying because the game takes about 25–30 seconds to boot up and automatically load your save, but it would only take 6–9 seconds if there were no title cards. I know that developers and publishers want people to see their logos, but we already saw them when we first started the game, so they should be skipped when the game is resumed.
I try to get the platinum in almost every game I play these days.I just did it in Gotham Knights, but that's because I was having a lot of fun. So, when I first play the game, I don't look at it. I go look after the credits are finished.It looks like you might have to play "The Chant" three times to get the platinum. This is because the choices you make in dialogue change who you are, which changes the ending. There's also a trophy for finishing the game on the hardest level of difficulty.
There are also a lot of trophies you can't get because you can't always go back to places you've already been. Also, there is no New Game+ mode, so I'm not sure if you have to get everything in one playthrough. For example, I missed one note, but I might have to get them all on my next run instead of just the one I missed. The game also doesn't have a chapter selection option, which is a shame. Even though this makes you more likely to play the game more than once, it could be frustrating if you miss something and can't go back or if you make the wrong choice in a conversation.
But since you can get a speedrun trophy for finishing the game in less than four hours, I bet it doesn't take long to go through the game again quickly if you need to.
On the subject of missing features, I was very upset that The Chant doesn't have a photo mode. During my playthrough, I took 261 photos, but only a few of them were clear. This isn't a problem with the game; it's because the PS5 doesn't take screenshots instantly. The "shutter speed" is a bit slow for action shots, but an in-game photo mode would have fixed that. When I played Gotham Knight, I took 687 pictures, most of them using the photo mode when the action was still and good for taking pictures.
If the developers read this, I'd like them to think about adding a photo mode before I play the game again and again.
On the PlayStation 5, The Chant runs like a dream. Even when there was a lot of action or particle effects (like the Gloom smog), I never saw the frame rate drop below 60 fps. Since the game doesn't support VRR or 120 FPS, I had to force VRR on my display, but I've heard that people with TVs that don't support VRR didn't have any technical problems either. This raises the question: Is there enough room for the developers to actually turn on VRR and unlock the framerate, like we see in a lot of Sony first-party games right now?
The Chant is creepy and disturbingly beautiful to look at, which is why I want a photo mode so badly. When the cutscenes get close to the bloody faces of the infected and possessed, it looks very cinematic and real, and then it goes back to real time without loading times or obvious cuts. In terms of loading, I think I saw 3 or 4 loading screens during my whole game, and each one lasted at most a few seconds. You can tell that the game was made for current-generation systems because it uses almost every feature (no VRR, 120 fps, or ray tracing).
Regarding the sound, the voice acting was great. Everyone did their part perfectly, and no one felt out of place or like they were in the wrong role. Also, we can't forget about how well the music fit the scenes and added more fear, dread, and suspense to the game. The only bad thing is that it doesn't look like it's for sale on PSN, but it is on Steam. Actually, it looks like none of the DLCs on Steam are on PSN or Xbox's store yet, even though pre-ordering the game was supposed to get you some of them (I'll send the PR an email about this).
The Chant is a scary game with a great mix of combat, exploration, puzzles, and scary moments. It's nice to play a character who acts like a real person, not a martial arts expert or a secret badass ready to beat the crap out of anything that moves. Instead, she waves her weapons around, falls over when rolling, and does what I would do: she runs away! There were a few good jump scares, the fighting was tough and satisfying, and the story kept me interested from the beginning to the end. I can't recommend this game enough. It would only be better if it had a strong photo mode and an NG+ mode.
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