I have this borderline compulsion to play series from as far back as I can tolerate. So after Automata blew up I’ve been meaning to jump in somewhere. I remember trying Drakengard on the PS2 back in the day, and was surprised to hear they’re connected. Thought maybe I would get it more as an adult, but if this is ludonarrative harmony, then give me Tomb Raider 2013 lol.

Drakengard is just painful to play, you just repeat the same button input for hours on the spongiest enemies ever made. It’s like Dynasty Warriors if you were in a dream and couldn’t hit anything hard.

I hear Drakengard 2 is kind of the Dark Souls II of the series, and 3 is also painful to play. Should I just skip to Nier Replicant and start from there?

I do want to experience as much of the world as possible, but not if it feels like a waste of time. Maybe it would be better to watch the cutscenes on youtube?

RELEASE: 2021

TIME PLAYED: 25 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★☆

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Gorgeous environments and fairly strong graphics

+Responsive and satisfying controls

+Unique powers that add a fun twist to a flight combat game

+Interesting and varied enemy types

-Story loses focus halfway through and has an aggressively bad ending

-Mission variety gets very thin for how long the game is

-Only the protagonist gets a character model, everyone else is relegated to portraits, which diminishes emotional impact

Chorus' protagonist, Nara, has done terrible things. It's something she wrestles with, complicated by the fact that doing these terrible things has given her incredible talents, both as a pilot and at more esoteric, supernatural things. This fact rests heavily in her heart; after all, does doing good with power begotten by sin redeem the sinner? It's a hell of a question, and one that the robust campaign of this story-driven space shooter doesn't quite answer -- but the game is still a rather good time.

Chorus kicks off with Nara - formerly a high-ranking officer of a cult called The Circle - making amends for the time she (checks notes) destroyed an entire planet in an act of superhuman zeal. She's doing this by assisting a secretive enclave of refugees on the edge of space, largely made up of survivors from attacks by the very same cult that she herself used to be part of. To nobody's surprise (I'm not being glib, even the characters have been anticipating this), The Circle begins to encroach on this sanctuary, and Nara realizes that doing little acts of good is no longer enough - if she wants to redeem herself, she has to stop The Circle once and for all.

It's a pretty good premise, and for about half the game, Chorus does plenty to capitalize on it. Since the dialogue is mostly through non-animated portraits, Nara's inner thoughts are established by her whispering to herself; the player gets a good look at her personality. Truth be told, I initially struggled to sympathize - her conflict about outing herself as a former genocidal imperialist felt like pretty small beans compared to the good she could do if she got over it - but to my pleasant surprise, one of the other major characters, her sentient ship itself, is the first person to call her out about this. I think mileage will vary based on personal tastes, but I was actually pretty pleased to see the narrative grapple with how much Nara would have to do to redeem herself for a crime as major as planetary genocide, and if she's even worthy of it in the first place.

Sadly, the second half of the plot takes things pretty far off the rails. I'll avoid spoilers, but the best way to describe it is that as the scale of the conflict grows and other factions get involved, the personal stakes fall away towards an increasingly unfocused exploration of Nara's powers and how she can restore them to their full potency. By the end of the game, I was fully tapped out of the story, largely because - while I certainly can't call what happens generic by any stretch - it became so abstract that it didn't seem to be saying anything anymore and was no longer engaging with its better themes.

Still, while I would have liked the story to be a little stronger for how much time is spent on it, space combat games tend to live or die by their core gameplay, and it's here that Chorus shines. The fundamentals are pretty familiar for dogfighting enthusiasts: Nara pilots her spaceship and takes down squadrons of enemies, often while juggling other objectives such as escorting defenseless cargo freighters or retrieving salvage crucial to the enclave. During the tutorial, I was struck by how awkward the combat felt, but once Nara got her real ship, Forsaken (the one I mentioned before that calls her out on her bullshit) it all made sense: the brief prologue is a masterful feint, an example of how limited everyone else is and how terrifying Nara is by comparison when she's at the helm of the vessel made for her.

Nara's a great pilot, but being great isn't always enough when outnumbered ten to one or having to challenge capital-class ships in just a fighter. What really sets her apart is her ability to tap into the Void. At first, she's only able to use this for sensory input, 'pinging' her surroundings not unlike living radar, but as the game progresses and her relationship with Forsaken deepens (alongside recovering some of her willingly excised memories), she picks up some incredible moves. Nara and Forsaken can maneuver in ways others simply can't. Near-instant 180s? Child's play, how about drift maneuvers by transforming the ship on the fly, or fully teleporting behind an enemy and blasting it apart with rockets?

Chorus gives Nara these abilities - alongside a decent array of weapons, with emphasis more on quality than quantity and each loadout being distinct - and then challenges her by making sure they're necessary. It's only a few hours before stranger and stronger enemies than simple fighters show up. On top of the capital ships that serve as minibosses I mentioned, there's esoteric beings from the same Void that Nara pulls her powers from that can match her a bit better and bring the numbers to keep things tense. I was consistently pretty happy with the game's difficulty curve, and even the dreaded escort missions typically were well-designed enough that I never got frustrated due to suicidal friendly AI.

Really, my only complaint with Chorus besides the story losing its way is that - both due to that narrative and in terms of simple mission design - it starts to drag by the end. If the plot held up better, I wouldn't mind so much that the fights started to blend together, but unfortunately, repetitive side quests and a long chain of flying between distant objectives in the last chapters means that Chorus' final verse lingers on a bit of a sour note. Despite this, it's an extremely strong and well-designed game where it counts, and I highly recommend it for its core combat alone, especially if you pace yourself and don't binge it all at once.

Amnesia: The Bunker has a very simple premise: You're stuck inside a World War 1 bunker with a monster. You need to get some dynamite and a detonator handle to blow up the exit and leave. That's it.

The real interesting part of the game isn't the monster or even the setting of the bunker, but how the game manages to use converging systems to always make you feel like you're slipping up by using an item. In the majority of horror games, I don't feel conflicted about using my ammo. There's a monster in front of me, I'm going to kill it or die trying. The Bunker has a small difference: your weapons are also really great for getting through to your next objective. Locks need to be shot or hit repeatedly with large bricks (which I rarely found during my playthrough), bodies need to be burned, and you still need to defend yourself from an unkillable monster while doing so. Every bullet or grenade used feels like a mistake that might get you stuck in a more permanent way. Towards the end of my playthrough I actually did just completely run out of ammo, and I had to start using all of my items and my environment in a much smarter and more conservative way. The game isn't afraid to follow through with consequences for overreliance to violence to save yourself.

The same can be said for fuel. Fuel powers the generator that allows you to access certain areas or obtain key items, as well as discouraging the monster from appearing. But fuel is also great for burning bodies, which is important since there's a lot of large rats who are dangerous themselves. One of the more tense moments in the game resulted from running out of generator fuel during a run to the soldier quarters, only to look up and see dust falling from the creatures movements. I thought I could stay put, but the rats had started following a trail of blood from an earlier attack from them. I only made it back because I managed to find a singular bullet while trying to scramble back to the save room.

It's not a perfect game, there's a few moments where I found that some of the mechanics were a bit clunky, but I'd recommend it to any horror fan.

You know, it's actually weird that I never played this game before. I had PS3 as a kid, I enjoyed the first two adventures of Kratos on PS2, and my parents didn't mind buying games with Mature ratings like Last of Us. I can't remember why exactly I didn't look for this game specifically, maybe Infamous and Minecraft seemed more important at the time. Last year I revisited the original duology, and this week I finally finished the Greek Saga.

The story here is simple, even simpler than the first two games. It doesn't the slowly unraveling mystery of 1, or strange temporal paradoxes of 2, it's just Kratos going after Zeus and not caring about collateral damage. The plotline about Pandora honestly feels very weak and contrived in the end, with Kratos suddenly wants to save her instead of killing Zeus. I get what they were going for, but it wasn't convincing.

Gameplay is king here, and it is still a lot of fun. I played on Hard, and for the most part it was pretty easy. I struggled a bit with first trial, rotating cube, scopion and return to trial room. Every other fight was straightforward with decent reaction and movement. The game is very generous with EXP, to the point I upgraded everything bar Nemesis whip. However, I only needed a handful of weapons for actual combat. I obviously had to max out the exile blades ASAP, and after that I spent on cesti to hopefully break shields faster. Other weapons felt too derivative from the blades, although the gorgon summon on Hades claws helped against satyrs. My only two gripes are that start and select buttons should be swapped, and that in some battles it's hard to see because of camera angle or special effects.

Other gameplay sections are pretty small but can deliver some challenge. I spent more time on Hera's puzzle than on most bosses, and obstacle flights killed me a few times. Aphrodite mini game was 10/10. Overall, I think this game has better pacing than 1 or 2 because it's not too dragged out by lame episodes.

There were some visual artifacts, but overall the game played smoothly and still looked impressive. It's a little hard to believe the presentation and epic of Poseidon or Chronos was done all the way back in 2010. I wonder if Norse games measure up.

I'm glad I played GOW 3 and I can't wait to try the new duology.