There are some good ideas in The Chant, surrounded by a bit of unpolish. The Chant is a survival horror action game set on a spiritual remote island retreat, where you play as a young woman (Jess) recovering from past trauma. Something on this island goes awry and cultists, beasts, and all hell are soon thrown into the mix.
Jess has 3 meters: Mentality, Heart, and Spirit. Heart acts as Jess' health bar. Mentality will decrease under different circumstances and cause Jess to have a panic attack, forcing her to run away from combat for a bit while being unable to attack for a brief moment. The Spirit meter allows Jess to slowly meditate, transferring whatever power is available in her Spirit meter to her Health and Mentality. Spirit also doubles as Jess' skill meter, allowing her to utilize skills to further help in combat. If either her Health or Mentality reaches zero, Jess dies.
Standard gameplay for the most part. Jess can pick up and read pages about the island retreat lore, pick up herbs to increase her mind/body/spirit meters, collect crystals to upgrade abilities, find old film tapes to view in projectors that show clips to further explain the story, etc. Puzzles involve finding items, and keys, moving lights into the correct sequence, etc. These start off fairly simple and slowly get more involved (but never frustrating or overly complicated) while utilizing the spiritual theme of the game quite well. Throughout the game, Jess will approach colored glooms to progress to various areas. These glooms act as nightmarish like fields, where being inside of these will slowly drain Jess' Mentality meter, causing her to panic and run away if it fully depletes. It's an interesting exploration/backtracking system, as, throughout the game, Jess earns colored prism necklaces that allow her to enter respective glooms pertaining to the colored prisms she has collected so far.
Combat ditches guns for a more melee, almost beat 'em-up approach. Instead of guns and standard melee weapons, Jess uses sticks to attack enemies using light and heavy attacks. Different sticks have different properties (fire, sage, occult), which are weaker/stronger against specific enemies. A few different throwable items such as essential oils and salt can be crafted and thrown at enemies, while skills with cooldowns can be used to stun, damage, and incapacitate enemies. Dodge somewhat works, as Jess will fall down and stumble giving her ample room to dodge attacks. Her dodge does become an issue when surrounded by a group of enemies or backed into a corner. Combat does feel clunky, even with notes taken from the action beat 'em-up genre.
Some issues I have with The Chant are a lack of manual saves. The game autosaves at some points, but not after every key action. Some parts reloaded me at least 5 minutes back, which was manageable, but annoying in a way. Boss fights, while not particularly challenging, can be won quite easily. While the game runs at 60 fps on Xbox Series S, it does slightly drop in some moments when climbing a ladder, entering a new area or in a boss battle when a lot of action is happening at once. Character faces look last gen and the voice acting is mostly serviceable, though the lip syncing isn't up to par.
There is some incentive for replayability as the game has 3 different endings and a Resident Evil-like achievement/trophy for completing the game in under 4 hours. My final playthrough clocked in at just over 6 hours.
Even with the clunkyness and lack of polish in some areas, I enjoyed The Chant from start to finish. It's one of those games that started out interesting and got better all the way through. While I wouldn't call it a hidden gem, it's worth checking out for a different take on a survival horror game.
Jess has 3 meters: Mentality, Heart, and Spirit. Heart acts as Jess' health bar. Mentality will decrease under different circumstances and cause Jess to have a panic attack, forcing her to run away from combat for a bit while being unable to attack for a brief moment. The Spirit meter allows Jess to slowly meditate, transferring whatever power is available in her Spirit meter to her Health and Mentality. Spirit also doubles as Jess' skill meter, allowing her to utilize skills to further help in combat. If either her Health or Mentality reaches zero, Jess dies.
Standard gameplay for the most part. Jess can pick up and read pages about the island retreat lore, pick up herbs to increase her mind/body/spirit meters, collect crystals to upgrade abilities, find old film tapes to view in projectors that show clips to further explain the story, etc. Puzzles involve finding items, and keys, moving lights into the correct sequence, etc. These start off fairly simple and slowly get more involved (but never frustrating or overly complicated) while utilizing the spiritual theme of the game quite well. Throughout the game, Jess will approach colored glooms to progress to various areas. These glooms act as nightmarish like fields, where being inside of these will slowly drain Jess' Mentality meter, causing her to panic and run away if it fully depletes. It's an interesting exploration/backtracking system, as, throughout the game, Jess earns colored prism necklaces that allow her to enter respective glooms pertaining to the colored prisms she has collected so far.
Combat ditches guns for a more melee, almost beat 'em-up approach. Instead of guns and standard melee weapons, Jess uses sticks to attack enemies using light and heavy attacks. Different sticks have different properties (fire, sage, occult), which are weaker/stronger against specific enemies. A few different throwable items such as essential oils and salt can be crafted and thrown at enemies, while skills with cooldowns can be used to stun, damage, and incapacitate enemies. Dodge somewhat works, as Jess will fall down and stumble giving her ample room to dodge attacks. Her dodge does become an issue when surrounded by a group of enemies or backed into a corner. Combat does feel clunky, even with notes taken from the action beat 'em-up genre.
Some issues I have with The Chant are a lack of manual saves. The game autosaves at some points, but not after every key action. Some parts reloaded me at least 5 minutes back, which was manageable, but annoying in a way. Boss fights, while not particularly challenging, can be won quite easily. While the game runs at 60 fps on Xbox Series S, it does slightly drop in some moments when climbing a ladder, entering a new area or in a boss battle when a lot of action is happening at once. Character faces look last gen and the voice acting is mostly serviceable, though the lip syncing isn't up to par.
There is some incentive for replayability as the game has 3 different endings and a Resident Evil-like achievement/trophy for completing the game in under 4 hours. My final playthrough clocked in at just over 6 hours.
Even with the clunkyness and lack of polish in some areas, I enjoyed The Chant from start to finish. It's one of those games that started out interesting and got better all the way through. While I wouldn't call it a hidden gem, it's worth checking out for a different take on a survival horror game.