However, Forspoken has been disappointing in its refusal to fit the mold. In many ways, it is exactly the same type of game we have seen countless times over the past 15 years. It's an open-world RPG with psychic powers, mysterious creatures, and terrifying threats to destroy the world. The main character, Frey Holland, is thrown out of his home in New York City and into a fantastical world. The main character, Fray Holland, is thrown out of his New York home and into a fantasy world. Along with her talking bracelet companion Cuff, she navigates the world of Atia and the threat "Blake" that threatens to engulf the land and all who live there.
This is a run-of-the-mill premise, and it doesn't take a particularly exciting turn. The twists and turns are predictable. A game's story doesn't necessarily have to be on the level of "BioShock" or "Nier": but "Forspoken" too often fails to enjoy its premise. That said, I did enjoy the second half of the story. The early part of the game falls into a rather selective storyline, turning Frey into a petty criminal who lives in an abandoned apartment and gets into trouble with the local gang. It would be a much more enjoyable story if the emphasis were less on who Frey is in New York and more on Asya Frey.
Despite the cringe-worthy trailer (opens in new tab) that showcases toe-curling dialogue, there are few moments in "Forspoken" that make me cringe with embarrassment. The infamous trailer dialogue (which comes from an early cutscene) is by far the worst offender. Perhaps it's because I've long been immune to Square Enix dialogues like "Kingdom Hearts" and "Final Fantasy.
The fact that I really enjoyed Frey as a character makes it all the better. As a woman who struggled to fit in with young adults, partly due to her tendency to chomp, I found her wonderfully relatable. Sure, she says "fuck" too many times, but so do I. She is one of the more relatable heroes I've played in a game recently, and I really wish she had been in a game that did her more justice. I also thoroughly enjoyed the rapport between her and Cuffe, even with the frequency of their interactions. Fortunately, it can be tweaked in the settings or turned off completely.
The most fun I had with Forspoken was when I ignored the story and explored Athia instead. Combat and movement are among the best in the game, with Frey able to parkour through the world at lightning speed and cast spells of various elements on the enemies that inhabit it. Dashing across the map, jumping up and down cliffs, and flying around is a real treat. At a little closer range, however, things get dicey as Frey is regularly bounced off of walls and short footholds. You have to sit back and wait for Frey to calm down and come back to the ground. Also, parkour is bound to the left Ctrl by default, which is a terribly inconvenient place for a button that is used for both moving around the world and dancing around enemies. After about 15 hours of play, I ended up having to re-bind it because my wrist was twitching so much it hurt.
Forspoken's magic covers the four basic elements (earth, fire, water, and air), with support and damage-based spells at Frey's fingertips. I enjoyed sidestepping and flipping enemies, shooting giant spiky boulders into their backs, and throwing them into bubbles. My biggest gripe, however, is that you don't get to use the full toolkit until the end of the game. [I am a regular defender of the slow start of "Final Fantasy 14" and have played a number of JRPGs. However, "Forspoken" could have been much better if it had started 15 hours earlier instead of 25 hours into the game. Not getting the final set of spells until just before the final boss feels like a major oversight to me. While such an approach makes sense for the story, it feels like a terrible way to keep the game engaging as a whole.
The enemies are interesting enough, vulnerable to certain types of magic and to certain conditions. When the enemies are not scattered around the world, they are placed in bland, repetitive dungeons and fortresses, with Ubisoft-esque objective-based pitfalls scattered around the map. These dungeons at least offer rewards such as cloaks, necklaces, and various nail art, which Frey can equip to enhance his strength, magic, and defense. However, the dungeons are all the same and offer little challenge. You jump into an instantiated area, run down a corridor to a room with enemies, and beat them up. It's a repetitive process. The fortress is much the same, simply set in the overworld.
Mutants were my favorite of the Forspoken battles. They were the toughest enemies throughout my play, but they were also great for learning patterns and getting into the habit of honing your evasive timing. At least when I could even understand what was going on during the stuttering.
It was extremely difficult to get Forspoken to run well on my PC, and I suffered terrible frame drops every time I entered combat. I never had a terrible rig, and the biggest drawback was the lack of RAM for the game's odd system requirements. The default graphics settings were standard, but I could barely get above 12 fps during combat and while in the capital.
In fact, a good portion of the early part of my 32-hour playthrough was spent fiddling with settings; Forspoken's PC port is horribly optimized, and nothing I did seemed to improve its behavior. There were some pretty serious problems with rendering textures, which were made worse when I tried to play at my usual 1440p.
Stones would blink in and out, doors would warp behind them when characters spoke, the speed dropped below 20 fps, and nauseating stuttering was the norm at the start of play. It was a real waste of my time early in the game, especially when it had a major impact on combat. In the end, I had to give up on making Forspoken look better and focus all my efforts on making it play better. If my screenshots look like crap, that's why.
Forspoken could have been so much more. I wish Luminous Productions had taken a cue from another game, Final Fantasy 15, and created more elaborate dungeons with fewer dungeons to explore. Instead, not much of the gameplay feels like a generic objective-collecting game: if you're not distracted by getting new gear between point A and point B, you can take a side trip to boost your stats at a monument, quickly explore a ruined building to wipe out enemies, and get your new nuggets of lore for the archives. Sometimes, when I went really far, I was able to find spells locked behind specific objective markers all over the map.
The filler objective I genuinely enjoyed and went out of my way for was the cat monument. They are of no use in gameplay, merely there as companions to greet Frey when he enters a rest stop to regain strength or upgrade his equipment. I'm a bit of a cat person, however, and as I write this review, my feline friend Luna is standing next to me. I loved the little strange looking fur babies, all of them with their own little fantastical twists. In particular, the black cat adorned with gold bracelets and horns stole my heart, and the only part of Forspoken's story that tugged at my heartstrings also centered on cats.
The biggest mistake I made in Forspoken was doing much of the exploring early on. If you do play it, I think it's a game worth getting on sale... Some rigs may be able to play it on consoles. The real fun comes when you get into the post game where you have a full kit of freys at your disposal. When I spent a few hours binge casting one or two spells, I lamented how basic the combat was. Had I been handed more elements early on, or had I simply ignored side tasks in favor of getting them, I think my time at Forspoken would have been much more enjoyable.
The game is most fun when you don't follow orders. The game doesn't randomly root you to the spot while it abruptly stops for a fade-to-black cutscene or initiates dialogue that could have easily been done on the move. Once the shackles of that tinny scenario were removed, I finally felt like I was playing the game Forspoken was aiming for. Don't get me wrong, freedom can't cover up the boring purpose of gameplay. But freedom certainly helps.
Games shouldn't have to end to feel like they're just getting started, and unfortunately for Forspoken, that's exactly what happened.
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