Chorus is one of my favourite video games.

The whole premise is catnip to me. Space opera. Shooters. Space exploration. Dogfights. It hits every box cleanly.

I love Star Wars. I am also tired of Star Wars. I wanted something original. Chorus delivers a story that only works as a video game, because the narrative is inseparable from how you learn to move, fight, and survive. Your abilities are not just upgrades. They are discoveries.

You play Nara. She is not a hero. She is a former enforcer for an authoritarian space cult called the Circle. She committed real atrocities. She knows it. The game never lets her off the hook.

She leaves the cult, tries to disappear, scavenges wreckage for a living. Then a single catastrophic event kills the people she has attached herself to, and she is forced to confront who she was and what she can never undo.

Mechanically, that confrontation looks like fast, aggressive, high-speed space combat. Every fight is face-to-face. Enemies swarm you. You do not trade fire from a distance. You close the gap and hunt.

Chorus is built entirely around movement. The signature mechanic is drifting, which lets you carry momentum while rotating freely, like an arcade racing drift translated into 3D space. Later, you unlock Rites, occult-feeling abilities that let you teleport behind enemies, EMP entire formations, phase through danger, or grab ships and smash them into each other. It feels wild and physical in a way most space shooters never attempt.

Despite how people describe it, this is not a sandbox in the Starfield sense. It is not about trading, mining, or economies. The structure is linear missions embedded inside semi-open regions. The side quests matter. They flesh out the world, deepen Nara’s history, and steadily turn you into something terrifying.

You are always in your ship. No walking. No FPS mode. No planet hopping on foot. Your fighter, Forsaken, is a literal character with a voice and a past. The entire game commits to the idea that spacefaring itself is the point.

That focus pays off. Exploring asteroid fields, derelict megastructures, and cult strongholds never feels like filler. Combat is mandatory, constant, and increasingly spectacular. Speed is survival. Later, power becomes domination.

Taking down a lone pirate feels good. Wiping an entire battleship fleet while drifting through debris at full throttle feels incredible.

Visually, this is a AA game from 2021 and it shows. It was never cutting edge. But the scale works. The panoramic space vistas, ship designs, and motion all hold together. When the game is flowing, it genuinely sings.

The sound design does a lot of heavy lifting. Strong voice performances. Punchy weapons. And a techno-classical soundtrack that leans hard into mood and melancholy. It fits the tone perfectly.

It is not flawless. Dogfights can blur together late game. Dialogue is sometimes interrupted by mission triggers and never resumes, which is maddening when the story is doing something interesting.

The final boss fight is divisive. I liked it. It is not hard. It is long. Exhaustingly long. It demands sustained attention. If you start it late at night, that is on you. Go to bed.

I finished the game. That alone says a lot. I rarely see games through to the end.

I logged about 30 hours. It could have been seven. I dragged it out because I did not want it to be over.

The unfortunate reality is that we will probably never see a sequel. Critics were generally positive. Players who found it loved it. But it underperformed commercially. Embracer later confirmed it missed sales expectations, and much of the studio was laid off. Chorus exists as a single, complete statement.

It goes on sale often. Sometimes absurdly cheap. If you have any interest in space combat games, it is absolutely worth your time. It is one of the most distinctive space shooters I have ever played.

@atomicpoet

Interesting. I think I started the tutorial and didn't get hooked, but there might have been some control wonkiness. With this review, I might dust it off again.