Chorus

I played this on Xbox Game Pass but have been craving to hop back in ever since my first run through the game. It's fun, enjoyable, and great arcade space fun. Plus---if you have one---it supports HOTAS/HOSAS.

Bought this on sale after seeing a review on it. Flight controls feel great, and I'm a big fan of the drift system which allows hairpin turns in 360 degrees. You'll feel like a pilot from Macross with some of the aerial maneuvers that are possible. Interesting main character. Storyline was intriguing if a little predictable after a while. The execution was fantastic though. Wish there were more weapon choices but I can safely say that there's enough to suit a variety of playstyles. Nearly clocked it in 25 hours, having done just about all side quests and taking my time. A good choice for fans of classic space shooters like Wing Commander or Descent.

Awful flight controls, annoying whispering, phoned-in voice acting, lazy plot and writing

The combat in this game is so dang good. You get a fairly complex quite of maneuvers for your ship that make for lots of skill expression and the controls feel tight and responsive. This game is absolutely worth it for the gameplay. The music is really solid too. It definitely falls short in some places: mid to bad voice acting, rough script, rough character animations in cutscenes, a few UI bugs. And I find the story a bit difficult to follow and the characters to all be nothing burgers, the main character doesn't really have any personality or interesting traits. So as the story is happening I'm not really feeling any connection to what's happening, but there are some cool ideas there. I would love to see more from this franchise if they're able to nail the gameplay as well as they did. The complaints I have don't take away from the experience for me, to be clear. I still really dig it despite its flaws. I also bought it on sale for only $2.50 so none of the downsides really bothered me. Edit after finishing the game: Still really loved the game despite some frustrating bits. To summarize, Stuff I liked: - The gameplay is incredibly fun and tight for space combat. The different enemy types are really fun to fight once you get the controls mastered, and the environments are designed in such a way that you can constantly be weaving between debris and asteroids and such and it feels so cool. I also picked up Everspace 2 to try that, and Chorvs has it absolutely beat in the flying mechanics. - The music is great, especially the Main Theme and Attack on Enclave. A lot of it can fall into the background, but there are a couple set pieces that feel so epic with the music choices, especially the final battle. - There are some really good set pieces, every fight felt fun, but every couple of hours you get a really cool space battle set piece, and the final battle really nails the epic space battle vibe as you tear through enemy ships with your fully powered kit. - The various systems you go to all look really nice and feel different from one another, from the opening asteroid belt, to the system with giant ice monoliths floating around, to the final system which takes place in a large space station. Stuff I didn't like: - The script was quite rough and didn't do the work of making me care about the characters and narrative. - The voice acting was, at its best, mid. - The cutscenes were poorly animated with really poor lip synch, making them feel cheap and janky, doing no favors for where the script was already lacking. - Nara, the main character, has no real character traits besides her guilt, which she is constantly dealing with. This would be a good angle for her character, but with no other traits to latch onto to make us care about this person who is in so much guilt and pain, it's just kind of exhausting. - Much of the narrative was delivered through these audio log memories that you scan in the world, they show you a hologram still in that location and play a small scene, and you're kinda stuck there listening to it with no way to skip through. It really lost me, especially with the narrative being so mid already. I mentioned a lot of negative stuff, but even so, all those negative aspects could not take away from the core gameplay which in my opinion was perfect. So addicting and with enough skill expression to really make you feel like a crack fighter pilot with superpowers. I wholeheartedly recommend it, but mainly for gameplay. If you're the type who skips story stuff just to play, you'll love it.