The Chant is another game that’s trailer blessed me while watching videos on YouTube, it is one of the benefits of not paying for YouTube premium, as sometimes you do get to see some awesome trailers. On this occasion, it was The Chant. Its gameplay from the trailer reminded me of games like The Quarry and The Dark Pictures and I liked the look of the added survival and combat elements. The other thing that stood out to me was the creature’s designs, they looked fantastic and interesting. I managed to get my hands on a copy for the Xbox Series X and began my spiritual journey on Glory Island.
You take on the role of Jessica who after being haunted by the death of her sister decides its time to take a retreat to the seemingly peaceful island that your childhood friend invites you to. This island is meant to be a spiritual retreat that helps those in need. Upon arriving at the island you are meant by your childhood friend Kim who then takes you to the retreat to meet up with the rest of the people on the island. This was meant to be a peaceful weekend away that turns into a horror show after a failed group chant opens up The Gloom and horrible creatures that feed off negative energy run rampant on the island. While trying to survive you must uncover the mysteries surrounding the island’s weird cult history and put a stop to the Gloom. This single-player, third-person horror action-adventure is full of secrets, engaging gameplay and interesting mechanics that keep you gripped from start to finish.
Jessica must do everything possible to put a stop to The Gloom. You are able to craft items and weapons that will aid against the psychedelic horror that after a failed ritual are loose on the island. The combat system does feel quite sluggish and slow at times but does the job, you come across various resources on the island that can help make new weapons, act as medicine or are used to help calm Jessica down if her panic levels get too low and you have a panic attack which prevents you from being able to fight in combat. You literally have to flee or get killed. These mechanics help keep The Chant from just being a cinematic experience as you have a lot of player input. You will also collect Prisms that will give you supernatural abilities, my favourite is the Swarm (Mandaphore) which lets you vomit a swarm of hungry Mandaphore towards an enemy. This helps you combat the bigger hordes of Gloom or stand a fighting chance against the bigger ones.
While the story progresses you come across Bestiary’s these fill you in on all the details of The Gloom Creatures and give you their backstory which fleshes the story out a lot more. You will also be able to upgrade Jessica by collecting Prismic Crystals. These will help increase the different stats that Jessica has and help determine what ending you get at the end of the game. The core three stats in The Chant are Mind, Body, and Spirit and to successfully get through the game you have to make sure that all three are well looked after and maintained. Consuming various consumables can help heal and keep you in the fight.
The Gloom will do anything it can to stab away at you, when you enter The Gloom you will start panicking and your Mind will start getting affected. The creatures also have the ability to do mind attacks which if successful will stun you for a while leaving you open to attacks. You can use the various weapons and throwables to make sure you don’t get caught off guard. Not every fight needs to be fought, so knowing when to stay and run is key to survival in The Chant.
Graphically the game looks good though it does suffer from the odd animation and lip sync issues. Thankfully it wasn’t a big issue as it didn’t affect the gameplay. The voice acting was well done and all the actors fit their roles perfectly, there were some scenes that did jump scares that pulled it off really well as it made me jump but I was hoping for more of a horror feel put the setting felt to bright for it to be truly scary. I feel if they made the island darker and more reliant on the flashlight at times then they could have really pulled off the horror factor but it did just come down to the odd jump scare that after a while became predictable. The audio was fantastic at setting the scenes as well as making some of the Gloom more menacing, the real hero was the voice acting as it has such a huge role in the way the story was told and developed in The Chant.
There isn’t much replay value in The Chant. Not unless you are aiming for alternative endings or collecting all the achievements. The Chant is fairly short so you could get through it fairly quickly if you are aiming for all the endings and achievements. The first time around it did take my time exploring and taking in the environment and trying to locate all the hidden lore notes and film reels, so I didn’t feel like I was rushing the campaign but when I saw the achievement saying to complete the story in under 4 hours it did make me feel like you could just speed run the game and miss a lot of the content. Though I suppose you would only go for that achievement once completing the game the first time around. The alternative endings are dependent on the choice you make during the story but ultimately, I felt let down by the endings as they didn’t really fill me with excitement or joy. They just felt put in for the sake of trying to put an ending to the story after the final boss fight.
Conclusion
The Chant was an enjoyable experience from start to finish, though there were some issues. The main one was the sluggish combat, even though I enjoyed the creature designs and the crafting system the actual combat itself did feel repetitive and slow. In all fairness, you are playing as someone that has probably never held a weapon before but at times I did find myself just wanting to run away from fights rather than fighting due to this bugbear. The mechanics do work hand in hand together and unravelling the mysteries surrounding the cult and The Gloom on the island was an interesting journey. The creature’s design was incredible hats off to the team and the voice acting was brilliant too, for those reasons I’m happy to give The Chant a good earner score of 7 out of 10.
Developer: Brass Token
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Publishers: Prime Matter, Plaion
Grab your copy here https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/the-chant/9nx008dvw20t direct from the Xbox store.
Enjoy the review? want to read more of our reviews? then click right here to be whisked away to the realm of our opinions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.