Chorus

I was impressed by Rockfish Games' strong 2017 debut Everspace, but while it's indeed the studio's first title, I have later learned that the founders Michael Schade and Christian Lohr weren't exactly newbies at making space combat games. Back at their previous company, Fishlabs Entertainment, they had been releasing for good many years a similar game series for mobile called Galaxy on Fire. Fishlabs ran out of money in 2013 and after brief bankruptcy proceedings it was acquired by Koch Media (now Plaion) who placed the studio under their Deep Silver publishing arm. (And Schade and Lohr proceeded to found Rockfish.)

Straightforward space combat

Deep Silver Fishlabs expanded into publishing but evidently continued developing games as well. And pretty much picked up where they had left off: When I installed Chorus (or "Chorvs" as I like to call it due to how the title is stylized as CHORVS on the cover art) and the game did the usual permissions request as games do on the Xbox app, it didn't do so as Chorus but as "Unleashed (GoF)" -- a working title perhaps or an eventually renamed Galaxy on Fire project. (I think Unleashed would have been a good release title too.)

Like Everspace, Chorus too is an arcadey space combat game though it doesn't have roguelike elements. Rather it has your typical main and side quest structure with fairly large space regions you can travel back and forth. The story is fairly simple and its writing feels unnecessarily melodramatic but I tried to not let it bother me too much. The game's protagonist Nara voicing her thoughts as whispers amidst dialogue adds to the melodrama.

Nara is a former cult member: destroying a whole planet was too much for her and so she left. The cult didn't go anywhere though and still threatens the good folk of... space? And so Nara has to go release her locked-away sentient ship (who's not too happy to have been stowed away) and start relearning her powers to unite everyone against a common enemy.

Mechanically just deep enough for its length

Movement in Chorus differs slightly from Everspace: you only go forward; no strafing nor up and down. I'd say I preferred how Everspace did it because in tight, enclosed spaces (into which Chorus traps you periodically) I often ended up crashing to walls. You do get drifting (which is somewhat hard to perceive happening in space, as it turns out) and an awesome teleport-behind-target ability later on though.

Nara's abilities, Rites, are what makes Chorus fun and worth playing in my opinion. At the endgame, zooming virtually untouchable around an armada of enemy ships is simply exhilarating.

You don't have much of a say on your ship's loadout outside what aspect of its weapons you want enhanced like damage or fire rate. Some modules are parts of a set and I eventually settled on one that improved Rites because I felt I would get the most of out the game that way.

I ended up unlocking every achievement in the game -- mostly because it was easy although I did have to grind some mastery perks in the final mission with endlessly respawning enemies. I also noted that progress in masteries persists through death though that shouldn't be a common occurrence (outside Rite-unlocking missions) if you play on Normal. Chorus may not have as much variation as Everpace but it's entertaining enough to temporarily quench one's thirst for arcadey space combat until Everspace 2 comes out.