The Chant Review

Amidst the enormity of AAA releases, the aggressive monetisation of the free-to-play market and the ongoing scarcity of modern gaming hardware, it can be all too easy for anxiety and stress to creep in. Balancing your digital intake with some physical exertion is a great start, but true calming enlightenment can be all too hard to achieve without some professional guidance. While it might seem beneficial to book yourself a retreat and be walked through meditations and breathing techniques, the survival horror title The Chant may do enough to dissuade you from balancing your chakras.

Hoping to reconnect with her estranged friend Kim and begin to deal with the trauma of her past, protagonist Jess travels to the remote Glory Island, the location for the Prismic Science Spiritual Retreat. Already sceptical of the spiritual, Jess is made all the more uneasy by the cult-like practices taking place on the island. While the situation is new and confronting, Jess lets go of her inhibitions, mingles with the small yet eclectic group of spiritualists and begins to see the potential benefits of her stay. That is until a moonlit ritual is interrupted, and a malevolent force is summoned to the island.

Everything looks serene; I’m sure my weekend won’t involve any cosmic horrors at all

The broken circle of the ritual allows another dimension, known as The Gloom, to take root on the island, bringing deranged creatures, possession, intrusive thoughts, and mental anguish. In an effort to complete the ritual and banish The Gloom, Jess must venture across Glory Island to retrieve powerful crystals and reunite the scattered members of the group. With the horror genre bursting at the seams with tales of physically-threatening ghouls and warped killers, The Chant’s focus on psychological and spiritual horror is refreshing, even if the scares are largely absent.

Exploring the island’s forests and caves, Jess encounters many monsters that emerge from The Gloom, all of which have a unique, plant-like quality to them that’s visually distinct and decidedly off-putting. While understandably upset by the otherworldly entities crashing what was to be a relaxing retreat, Jess isn’t going to give up without a fight. Using an array of appropriate weapons, like burning sticks of sage and smouldering vines, the player can combat the possessed cult members and ulcerated giant toads and take the fight directly to The Gloom

Meh, I’ve had worse Airbnb stays 

Combined with a collection of damage-dealing items, such as salt and essential oils, Jess becomes less of a hapless horror victim and more of a final girl from the 70s and 80s films that The Chant likely drew inspiration. Jess also has a number of spiritual combat abilities that she can use as you collect crystals during the story. Slowing time, turning invisible and summoning spikes from the ground are all useful skills that Jess can use at the cost of a spirit gauge. All of these elements come together to create an admirable combat experience, though the movement is stiff and a bit clunky, so you’ll often feel overwhelmed by larger groups. Furthermore, the weapons you use degrade and break and need to be crafted again with resources that you either have a huge abundance of or can barely find, leading to moments of frustration.

The worst is (unfortunately) saved for last in terms of combat, with the game’s climactic boss battle completely derailed by making your Spirit abilities useless, diluting the encounter to be nothing more than standing in front of the enemy, swiping away until the next phase kicks in. While I never found myself loving the combat, I found fights to be tense, an element that’s completely missing from the finale.

A quick heart-to-heart before we burn some sage and kick some arse

Alongside Spirit there are also gauges for Mind and Body. The Body is fairly straightforward, acting as your health, with Jess dying if it runs out due to taking physical damage. The Mind stat acts similarly to sanity in other horror titles, with dark places, concentrated areas of Gloom and cosmic horrors all lowering the gauge. If the Mind meter runs dry Jess will panic, eventually draining her Body stat. All three of the stats can be upgraded in a skill tree by spending a collectable resource, which acts to raise the stat’s reserve, make healing items more potent and so on. The Mind, Body and Spirit can also be strengthened by choosing dialogue options when interacting with the other retreat members. Still, outside of changing which of the three endings you get, this feature feels tacked on and a bit arbitrary.

As you work through old mines and derelict cult camps, your progress will be halted by puzzles of varying difficulty. For the most part, a locked door will require a key that’s been divided into three pieces, with combining them being the only task necessary to continue, but a few instances require some thought. While you can explore the island in a somewhat open way, you’ll never need to head back to previous locations, making the whole experience very linear, which will be positive or negative depending on your taste.

I get that we’re looking to achieve spiritual enlightenment, but can’t we just watch The Dark Knight or something?

The story is split into bite-sized sections that explore the past experiences of each of the other members of the retreat and what traumatic events led them to Glory Island. Delving into some dark places, these smaller narrative threads can be somewhat confronting, though they are undercut by some patchy writing and some awkwardly entertaining animations that aren’t meant to be funny but absolutely are. Overall though I was engaged with the psychological story being told here, only to be disappointed with a baffling ending that seemed to serve only as a means to encourage multiple playthroughs. I didn’t feel drawn to do so, but with a spot-on run time of five to six hours, you could do so easily.

Final Thoughts

As a debut title for Brass Token, The Chant is an admirable horror experience that introduces plenty of elements I can see fleshing out in future releases. The unique premise, excellent creature design and interesting story make the six hours of run time worth playing through, but uneven writing, largely clunky combat and a rough final act detract somewhat from the positives.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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