Forspoken's reviews have been released, and now you can get up close and personal with the dragon. Square Enix's latest RPG was released on January 24, and reviews from gaming sites are pouring in.

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a bit longer to join PC Gamer's review; no code for the PC version was provided for review, so everything here is for the PlayStation 5 version of Forspoken; Forspoken's system requirements look I'm praying for my rig that the system requirements for Forspoken are not as rough as they appear.

The overwhelming consensus seems to be that Forspoken is a bullseye average. Fun combat and movement are buried by what I would call a terrible story. Ouch; it's currently around 68 on Metacritic, with the following ratings from its rivals.

Game Informer: 7.5/10

So far, Kyle Hilliard of Game Informer has given it a favorable review among the larger sites. He writes, "Forspoken's story and combat don't reach the heights of movement and exploration, but thankfully the latter two elements make up most of the experience," and adds, "The story doesn't last long, and I often avoided open-world combat, but I've been playing Frey in Athia I enjoyed discovering treasure chests and secrets by making them jump and fly," he added.

IGN: 6/10

Tom Marks described Forspoken as "a surprisingly generic RPG," finding the open world too expansive and the gameplay just about sums up the experience." Forspoken is a game you've probably seen before, from its stereotypical fish out of water fantasy storyline to its huge open-world map filled with repetitive optional tasks." Its combat is flashy, enough to make a relatively short RPG campaign entertaining, and the fights are well done to shake up the use of elemental power, even if the overall variety of enemies is not particularly impressive."

He writes.

TheGamer: 3.5/5

Like GI and IGN, TheGamer's Ryan Thomas Bamsey found Forspoken "an awkward game with choppy dialogue and characterization. But he called movement the real gem of the game. Forspoken excels most in movement. It feels fluid and natural and gives you lots of tools to overcome obstacles in different ways."

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VG247: 3/5

Another site praised the gameplay but slammed the story; James Billcliffe said Forspoken "runs at full speed alongside the blockbuster franchises of other major publishers He felt that Forspoken was "trying to run as hard as it can alongside other big publishers' blockbuster franchises. But the game plunges in from the shin and overcomes every hurdle. Its slow start belies a combat system worth the effort to master, but it takes so long to get up to full speed that it's already on borrowed time". He also criticized the dual-sense control scheme. If you intend to play games with the controller, it's not very good.

Gamespot: 5/10

Complaints about the game's story come up again, with Jordan Ramée of Gamespot specifically singling out the main character, Frey, as "one of Forspoken's weakest parts." He called her "inherently unlikable" for much of the game's storyline and said that she deviates in the worst way from the Isekai tropes that Forspoken is built around. He said, "Forspoken has done nothing to celebrate Frey as a black man, woman, or anything else about her. The only notable perspective of Frey in this game is that she is an orphan, and that limitation not only hinders the character development she can achieve, it only makes her stale after a few hours."[24

GamesRadar+: 2.5/5

Rollin Bishop of sister site GamesRadar+ expressed similar sentiments. He called Forspoken "an exceptionally middling experience" and again praised the moves and spells, while criticizing the story. The postponed Forspoken, unfortunately, could still have used a little more development time. "Somewhere buried deep within Forspoken is an impressive mechanic, but too often it is swallowed up by the evils of classic open worlds, lackluster storytelling, and sometimes horrific animation."

The Washington Post (Launcher): unscored

Gene Park seemed to change his mind about Forspoken as the game neared its end. While his criticisms were in line with most, his view of the story changed towards the end of the game. I consider myself a fairly cynical viewer when it comes to being surprised by video game stories, but Forspoken still caught me off guard," he wrote. Indeed, I struggled to finish the game's formulaic open-world activities, but once the story got going, I was riveted."

Polygon Unscored

Polygon's Grayson Morley felt that "the early stages of Forspoken are by far the worst." Of his 16 hours of play, "the first seven hours are ...... long tutorials, one-note combat, and relentless attempts to interrupt the "magic parkour" with lore items, terrible dialogue, sheep-snatching mini-games, cat-chasing mini-games, and spoken words detailing the intricacies of meat production in Forspoken's empty and ugly hub city of Cipal I was interrupted."

Eurogamer: Henry Stockdale felt that there was something special about Forspoken, despite the problems already noted on many other sites; unlike Gamespot, he found Frey "a great character, if not necessarily a likable one. He felt that Frey was "a great character, if not necessarily a likable one. He called her criminal origins "a very questionable choice that feels lazy," but "that doesn't stop her from being one of the most genuine protagonists I've seen recently."

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