Chorus takes place in the far future of space. Players are a gifted pilot named Nara who was once part of a giant cult called The Circle. After she was asked to destroy a planet, which she did with ease, Nara found that that request was a step too far.
Nara ran away after the incident, and Chorus picks up a few years into her hiding. She now leads a peaceful life as a scavenger for a local colony until her old nightmare returns. Nara must once again take up the power of the dark side to return light to the galaxy. Can she do it? That’s the premise so what are some tips to help players get started?
8 Difficulty And Permadeath
There are four main difficulties players can choose from at the start of Chorus. Unlike most games, the easiest mode is still going to be a challenge as it is lacking an accessible host of options such as invincibility. Part of the reason why Easy can still be hard is that Chorus' controls may take some time to get used to.
It is not often that a AAA space shooter gets made anymore so some players may be rusty at the experience. The best advice to give for beginners is obvious: stick to Easy. This can always be changed in another profile if players want to up the challenge.
7 When The World Opens Up, Explore
After a brief tutorial mission inside an old ship, the game will become an open-world space adventure. First, go to the Enclave as Sav suggests. This will open up the ship customization yard.
After that point, it is best to start exploring rather than continuing with the story. Getting items to equip and money to spend towards improving the ship will make the game easier in the long run. The side quests are nicely varied, from escort missions to races or piloting new ships to take down enemies. Don’t forget to mark up quests with custom markers on the map either.
6 Always Be Scanning
Nara’s ship is equipped with a scanning ability that runs on a cooldown. The scan can locate the next objective along with side materials. Be on the lookout for big boxes floating around. These can be found in ships, or even around asteroids in the open-world.
Sometimes these boxes will contain items while other times they will have money. Scanning the surroundings can even locate hidden quests. Being thorough with area investigations is the full tip here.
5 Save When You Can
Chorus is pretty good about autosaving progress and providing thorough checkpoints. However, players aren’t going to know if they’re going to get stuck in a mission or not. If that happens, there is always a way to abort the mission in the pause menu.
Sometimes that can create a big hassle. It’s best to always save manually before coming close to a mission objective. Missions start a good distance away from the actual task markers. If players are within the quest zone, manual saves will be disabled. Keep that in mind before attempting a mission.
4 What To Upgrade
As soon as the shipyard opens up in the Enclave, players will be greeted with a bounty of options. There are upgrades to improve health and shield strength. Players can equip accessories that can boost other stats. There are also weapons to beef up offensive power.
The best decision right away is to focus on health and shields. Don’t overspend though. Money is hard to come by early on in the game. It also might be a good idea to save up instead for the first big gun weapon upgrade. That should even the playing field no matter what difficulty players chose.
3 How Healing Works
There are three ways to heal in Chorus. First, enemies will randomly drop green health orbs. Collecting these will heal HP while the shield will regenerate itself.
When outside of battle, HP will regenerate automatically. Players don’t have to find a ship repair facility every time they get out of combat at least. However, it would have been nice if some health recovered while in battle by itself. Then, after a couple of hours into Chorus, players will be rewarded with their first nanomachine device. This accessory will heal the ship, running on a cooldown once activated. Health gets easier to manage after this point. Be on the lookout for more devices like this.
2 Check Your Mastery Menu
Some players may not be aware of this, but Chorus has some RPG elements. In the game menu, there is a selection called Mastery. Every piece of the ship can be leveled up a max number of times.
These parts don’t gain experience points, unlike most RPGs. These Mastery lists are more like achievements. For example, the first gun will level up based on the number of enemies destroyed. The hull of the ship can level up its resistance the more damage it takes, as another example. Be sure to check progress in the Mastery menu to make the most out of combat. It should help freshen things up.
1 Use Headphones
Nara talks normally to NPCs. However, most of her dialogue is whispered to herself almost like she is channeling Gollum. Sometimes it can feel like she is in the wrong game and would have made for a good creepy villain in a horror experience instead.
Because she whispers a lot, it’s important to pop headphones into the controller. Doing so might help clue players into the next objective or they may learn a critical point about her backstory. Using headphones in battle might also help with spatial awareness. Enemies can seemingly pop out of anywhere.
Chorus was released on December 3, 2021 and is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.