Halloween has come and gone, and developer Brass Token wants to keep the spooky season going with the release of The Chant in November. After seeing a brief preview last month, we take a look back at the supernatural adventure game and have our thoughts below. Time to see if Brass Token’s do-it-yourself attitude paid off in our The Chant PS5 review.
The Singing apparently takes place during the present day, and the player assumes control of Jess, a working woman who specializes in biomedicine, but suffers from PTSD due to a traumatic event in her past involving her sister and (now ex) best. friend Kim.
That friend has extended an olive branch and invited Jess to an island retreat called Prismatic Science, which takes place on secluded Glory Island. Of course, since this is a horror game, everything goes wrong on the first night, and before she knows what’s happening, Jess must fight for her survival barefoot and barely equipped.
The pace of the story is surprisingly fast at first. It seems that Jess barely settles in before things get crazy. The enigmatic leader Tyler quickly turns into a sniveling, useless man-child, while other members of the cult retreat react the same way as him. Everyone has their own baggage that they hope to remove during this retreat, something Jess literally goes through as she acquires crystals, which grant her access to a dimension known as Gloom. The supernatural aspects of this adventure show up early on, and Jess is all too accepting of what she’s seeing, given her background as a scientist.
The enemies Jess encounters are from another world. Those who live within the alternate dimension known as Gloom are a sort of unholy amalgamation that mixes plant life with humanoid creatures, along with floating jellyfish-like creatures and other aggressive plants. These enemies only appear within Gloom, while other cult members using animal skulls can occasionally be found throughout the island.
As Jess is not a fighter by nature, she only has a few weapons available to craft, such as a sage stick or a bunch of sticks that light up at the tip, along with various oils that she can throw at enemies or leave behind. like traps. In fact, most of the enemies are avoidable, and there’s even a trophy for completing the entire game without killing a single cult member.
It’s good that you don’t need to kill every enemy, because combat in The Chant is not its strong suit. As mentioned, Jess is not a fighter and as such, her movements are slow and her dodging is almost ineffective. Double-tapping the circle button activates what’s called a desperate dodge, in which she backs up and out of harm’s way. It’s occasionally useful, but mostly it’s an over-the-top animation that you’re usually sorry you accidentally triggered.
All combat is close range and there is no way to tell an enemy’s current health until they are defeated. This is fine for normal enemies, but later bosses make it hard to tell how close you are to defeating them, which can be frustrating. You can only carry three of each type of weapon or thrown, and weapons degrade after a dozen successful hits. Holding L2 slows things down and allows you to craft more weapons or throwables, as long as you’ve acquired the necessary resources, and targeting any item automatically equips it, which is a nice touch, but definitely takes some getting used to.
You’ll also need some time to get used to managing what are essentially three separate health bars: Mind, Body, and Spirit. If any of these meters deplete, Jess suffers various effects: the mind triggers a panic attack, so she can no longer attack and must find a safer place, the body kills her completely, and the depletion of the spirit means that Jess he can no longer meditate to regain his sanity. . That last one is important, as holding the cross button outside of combat allows Jess to regain some mental energy, and if she’s near certain tables that have large crystals, then she can fully heal her mind with almost no damage. position. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, and keeping track of three status bars isn’t too difficult once you realize that only the Body stat really forces you to start over from the last checkpoint. Jess can also carry up to two healing items in each of these three stat categories to recover, something that can be upgraded.
There are some light RPG elements to The Chant, and Jess earns XP for most actions in the game. Reading a part of the story or watching a reel-to-reel tape on one of the game’s many conveniently placed projectors earns mind experience, while defeating physical enemies grants body experience, and defeating Gloom enemies earns spirit points.
At various points throughout the story, there are also branching dialogue options, which award three times as many points compared to other actions. This is all tracked via the Stats option on the pause screen, which can come in handy if you’re chasing one of the game’s endings.
Unreal Engine 4 hums in the background, and while The Chant looks good, it’s pretty average when it comes to graphics. Brass Token seemed to pay special attention to the texture of the skin, because as Jess and the others get dirty, blood, dirt, and other substances accumulate on their bodies, collecting in cracks and wrinkles. It’s an interesting effect, though because the rest of the character models aren’t very realistic, it can look a bit cartoonish at times. Perhaps due to the average graphics, The Chant has no problem running at 60 frames per second on the PS5 no matter what’s going on.
Despite being a low-budget title, The Chant takes advantage of some of the features of the PS5. The DualSense adaptive trigger functionality is used for attacking: pulling the R2 trigger a little will cause Jess to perform a light attack, while pulling him past the point of resistance will result in a heavy attack. This is a nice mechanic, although in practice I was using heavy attacks all the time because most enemies don’t react fast enough to Jess’s attacks to interrupt her. The LED also changes color depending on where Jess is, often matching the color of the Gloom she is on.
Screenshots of The Chant (PS5)
The chant doesn’t stick around for long and most players will complete it in around eight hours on the Normal difficulty setting. There are three different endings, each of which depends on a single variable: how much experience you have accumulated in the Mind, Body, or Spirit categories. Whichever has the highest number at the end of the game dictates which ending you’ll see, and some are definitely worse than others.
Unfortunately, other than starting a new game, there’s no way to replay a section for that part of the story you missed or choose a different branch dialogue option. Some of these more modern post-game options would have helped incentivize people to play the game again.
The Chant is an excellent first Brass Token offering. It can be a little rough around the edges, but overall, it’s the perfect thing to play on those long, dark nights ahead this season. With a short play time and three different endings to unlock, this should be fun for others to watch as well. It may not be the scariest game released this year, but The Chant has an odd design to its creatures that will make some people uneasy late at night. Balance your chakra and join The Chant if you are looking for a decent spiritual adventure.
7.5 
A short and varied adventure Solid technical performance Unique three-bar health system Awkward combat Weird character models Not really very scary
Source: news.google.com