Why is my hinge joint acting stiff with no spring?

I am changing the gravity of the level and the hinge joint behaves like a chain (like I want) when changing the direction once, but after changing the direction to be 90 degrees of that, it starts to stiffen, and the chain seems to bend instead of going slack. All the axes on all the chains are set to 1, so I see no reason for it to behave the way it does.

Are there any settings I can tweak to make sure it'll always try to go slack?

Edit: I know now I should be using spring joints instead, and though that's not ideal either, it's certainly better behaved.