Chorus

Chorus is at once surprisingly good and frustratingly disappointing.

The world building is superb. One can easily imagine excellent sci-fi novels or movies based on the core themes and premises. There are alluring characters with layered motivations and complex histories, and so much is going on behind the scenes. And the visual language and much (but not all) of the voice acting is excellently matched to the storytelling, even when it's less than gripping. It's easy to immerse oneself in this world of desperate resistance, fanatic cults, and techno-magic in space. That said, the narration style is very specific and it seems not all reviewers loved it. I mostly did and thought it was well calibrated for the intended mood.

Unfortunately, this sense of immersion hits a brick wall. The hard limitation is that you're always inside a ship, except for a few cut scenes. Sure, this is at its core a space combat game, but it's a testament to the power of the narrative that the gameplay, though mostly good, feels insufficient. I sorely wanted to disembark and walk inside these space stations, mining operations, and settlements, to meet and talk to the NPCs and perhaps have an in-person adventure. But you're always in the cockpit and only interact with others over comms in hardcoded dialog. Also, despite taking place in "space", the world is small. There are less than a handful of areas with not many locations therein. And exploration is not very rewarding. If you're persistent you can find some stuff to upgrade your ship and weapons, but the rewards are kinda meh. The game is not very hard and even if you're not an exploration fiend I expect that by the late game you should have more than enough resources to max out the important abilities.

The gameplay is likewise a mix of pleasure and letdown. On the one hand, controls feel great and combat is excellently balanced between arcade shooting and 3D tactics, all without being disorienting or annoyingly "Newtonian". But the gameplay loop gets tired. Missions are alluring in their setup and then so remarkably unimaginative in their execution. Despite their diverse premises they all end up being samey defense, escort, or fetch missions. There are a few "dungeon" areas, but they are linear and, again, samey. The objectives are also poorly communicated to the point that they appear buggy. Often missions you see on the map won't trigger because you haven't satisfied a prerequisite, but there's no indication of what's missing. The forums are full of people frustrated by confusing indications. I found out the hard way that I just had to move on and come back later.

Big technical annoyance: you can't save the game whenever you want. Once a mission is started you have to play it to completion or redo if you quit the game before finishing it.

I generally recommend Chorus if you like space fights and cool sci-fi stories. But if you've played the publisher's other games, especially the Metro series, don't expect anything like that here. This is neither a real RPG nor an open world experience. Chorus seems like it [B]could[/B] have been such a game, but it just doesn't have enough gameplay depth. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it as a cool little space adventure with some epic battles.