The Chant Review

This game was a massive surprise, I was browsing through a bunch of random PS5 games to buy physically at a convention and when I looked at this particular game I thought it was going to be one of those narrative point and click adventure horror games like Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures games but to my surprise, The Chant isn't that and it has more traditional gameplay.

The best way of describing The Chant is that what if you had the level design and level progression of the Resident Evil remake games particularly 2 and 3, with new God of War's combat with the tone and presentation of the aforementioned Until Dawn and Dark Pictures games? You get this.

The story and presentation is pretty decent stuff, it's commendable that this is a double A game at all. It's very similar to something Supermassive would make, there are choices here but there are few and far between.

However the moment to moment gameplay itself is where the game I'm most surprised in, The Chant like I said is a AA horror game. Level design and how you progress through a level is much like the newer Resident Evil games where you have to look around, backtrack, find key items and progress through the level using these items to interact with various locks and objectives, they both have a traditional over the shoulder camera too. All though some issues is that a lot of the item based progression puzzles can revolve around the same thing, where you need to get a key to interact with a specific lock, or find 3 occult items that forms a key to open a door with an occult symbol on it. There is some interesting parts where you need to line up some lights and direct them at a lighthouse or gather some colored balls within some areas with their respective colors to a church door of sorts.

There is a good amount of combat however and it's not "bad" by any means, it's decent stuff and it's decently made for a horror game and for a melee based one at that. I wouldn't say it's on the level of the Condemned games but it's solid enough for what it's going for. A comparison to make is that it's much like the Newer God of Wars with the over the shoulder, the fact that you have an attack button mapped to a trigger button, a dodge move and a "roll" which isn't really a roll and more like a "trip" that works like one, and some secondary attacks like a slowdown to name an example.

What makes this combat work and not terrible is how forgiving it tends to be, enemies have a certain telegraphed wind up to when they are about attack meaning there is a solid enough timing window to dodge attacks, some enemies do have "invunerablity states" where they act aggressive but can't be hurt but of the time, their attacks are telegraphed well enough that it's actually possible to consistent dodge attacks add to this that healing items are generally plentiful and you can regen apart of your health after encounters and it's melee based horror combat that is actually playable.

Some issues I did have is that enemies can be spongey, apparently enemies are weak to certain weapons and items but I tried using red weapons with enemies with red health bars and even used red weapons on enemies with blue health bars and they seem to do the same amount of damage, it also didn't help that pressing R2 to attack constantly hurts my fingers so I eventually lowered to easy since I found so many of the enemies to be spongey, but the difficulty is reasonable on that mode, and it maintains the tension that horror games and by extension many games should have where it's challenging to the point where there is tension but not so much so that it becomes offputting and frustrating. There are also moments where you need to run away especially when there are more than 2 enemies which is good because I can't picture myself fighting 3 enemies with these controls, there are other issues like occasionally being attacked from behind and you don't have an indicator like in new God of War but like I said, most combat encounters tend to be 2 and maybe 3 enemies at most. 

Another issue that boss fights aren't very good, this is a horror game and that is to be expected but what annoys me about the bosses in this game is that the actual bosses aren't hard, it's just that there are long phases inbetween where you have to fight waves of enemies inbetween the actual boss and if you die since enemies can be spongey, you got to start from the begginning, easy mode does mitigate but this was one of the reasons why I lowered to easy after a point.

The last few areas can feel a little rushed since there is more walking sections in the last chapter than there is in the rest of the game, there are some good moments like the aforementioned colored balls but it feels more guided compared to the rest of the game and there is an actual puzzle you have to do to make a solution to detroy a grass wall which can feel jarring since the rest of the puzzles are just item puzzles. The fast travel element also feels half baked since you could just teleport Jess back to the start of the hub at the end of a boss and start her there at the start of a chapter than pointless downtime walking back. This almost makes me think there was supposed to be an open world, thankfully there isn't.

Overall, The Chant was a surprise, it was a random convention buy, it turned to be a game I actually did enjoy playing