I’ve never heard about The Chant until it suddenly appeared at the storefronts and something about it made me curious. And now that I’ve finished it, I’d still call it “curious”. A pleasant variety of curious, though, and quite likely worth your time if you like horror themed action adventure titles of the survival action-esque variety.
So yeah, it’s not a horror themed adventure game or a title where you run and hide all the time. The game knows that it’s, sadly, a big deal in modern times as well and establishes that it has combat in a short introductory section way before there’s any real danger. In fact, the game is surprisingly swift and concise with a lot of the things. It doesn’t really rush through the story as much as moving at a constant and confident pace, discarding a lot of the superficial and building up “just enough” of anything before letting you try it out for yourself and move on.
It does help that the main mechanics are quite simple, as you have a very primitive combat with a dodge and a push options, simple crafting of weapons/tools and an almost unnecessary upgrade screen. It all works well enough, even though apparently there is a perfect dodge and a perfect push, since there are abilities for it, but the game never explains how that works and whatever timings I’ve tried I never saw them trigger. But even with that somewhat undercooked idea that slightly reminded me of Resident Evil: Outbreak (and Illbleed) works just fine and after some time in the beginning, where you might be tight on resources, you will learn to manage them well soon after.
The story is also really well done, with characters addressing everything you’d expect them to, having some fun banter and also not shying away from some unexpectedly heavy topics. But not the ones that are often touched upon in horror, which also felt fresh. The game constantly balances out the ridiculousness of the cosmic horror that’s going on with pragmatism of the characters that feel grounded and it works fantastically.
That is, until almost the very end. For whatever reason, the ending 20 minutes of the game or so are just non-stop trash fire with poorly designed bosses and an ending that just happens, seemingly because the developers just didn’t know what to do. It’s a real shame because – as mentioned, the swiftness of things felt completely controlled and intended up until then. And then suddenly the game just falls flat on its face so hard you’d never expect it coming.
Nevertheless, I genuinely enjoyed my time with The Chant. It’s a really fun survival action-ish title, with cool story and characters and a pretty neat soundtrack. Don’t expect it to blow your mind, but do expect to be pleasantly surprised by just how good this game can be.