The first two hours of Forspoken are some of the worst I’ve experienced from a major in many, many years. A possibly controversial introduction to a game I can ultimately recommend to some. And then I still want to emphasize that the criticism is far from complete.
Forspoken has been delayed several times, has received harsh criticism from a wider crowd of skeptical consumers for its to say the least silly marketing and shallow dialogue, and when even a rather circumstantial demo could not repair the damage – one wonders what can save the project? It was almost written in the stars for a while that the Forspoken would not just be a shrug, but a downright disgrace.
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But it isn’t, at least not when you play it. It’s just that around its gameplay is a swirl of disjointed elements that really struggle to form the vital connective tissue that creates cohesion in an action role-playing game like this. Although it is about moving quickly and elegantly, it seems to trip over its own legs countless times.
In Forspoken, you assume the role of Frey Holland, and during the opening stages of the adventure, she is little more than a thief in conflict with the law who is really just trying to make a living. She works feverishly to save up enough money to finally escape New York, the city she blames for all her problems. When that plan fails, she considers her limited options, and just before giving in to despair, she is transported to Athia using the “Cuff”, a talking magical bracelet that appears to contain the soul of an alien being. Athia is in big trouble and has been brought to her knees by a corrupting force known as “The Break”. Humanity’s last bastion is the city of Cipal, and it’s up to Frey to find the source of The Break, save Athia and ultimately himself.
There you have the classic summary, and with that done I can tell you that the New York part of Forspoken is downright lousy. It’s way too long, disjointed, half-heartedly put together, and looks like something that was put together in months. Not only that, it also lacks that crucial polish. Sure, this part builds a bridge to Athia, where the game actually takes place, but beyond that, this episode does nothing but underscore how messed up the Forspoken really is. That this section slipped through the eye of a needle through countless QA tests is a mystery to me.
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And it doesn’t get better right away, as the Forspoken insists on continuing to waste the player’s time, even after the central storyline is established, by consistently forcing the player into pointless tutorials and boring errands. Worse, these take up far too much of the game’s first few hours and fail to effectively explain and introduce me to the key elements of game structure and how these combine to form a cohesive experience. I didn’t know I had Stamina until five hours into the game…
It might sound just as bad as you already imagined it would be. I thought so too. So imagine my surprise when Frey, or myself, finally got to run free with my magical parkour skills and take me for miles without issue, at which point this is where the game actually gets… good. The adventure consists of fairly conventional open-world elements, such as dungeons, puzzles, a rudimentary equipment system, and resources used to craft healing potions, for example. All of this has to be repeated countless times in the open world, and it’s easy to see after just a few hours that the game isn’t reinventing the wheel. What it does manage to do consistently for a large portion of the time, however, is place interesting combinations of enemies in front of you and give you access to a myriad of different magical abilities.
By either picking up Mana Nodes in the open world or by leveling up, you can gradually develop and upgrade these abilities, which are either offensive or defensive, and when I say different, I mean different. A tropical cyclone, an army of lava warriors, a Sleeping Beauty eagle – these abilities are so infinitely different, and how they interact with each other has been thought through down to the smallest detail. In addition, it is relatively easy to select a new one via L1 and R1 and activate them via L2 and R2. It means you have to cycle through active abilities and pause a little too often, but it’s entertaining. They not only work well together, but also between different types where each ability can be used in more than one way.
Then we have the parkour abilities. While they’re a little poorly explained at first (which is the theme of this entire review), they’re activated by holding down the circle button, allowing Frey himself to move smoothly through the open world. These can be upgraded and are also used as a way to elegantly dodge enemy attacks. The camera struggles to keep up when there are a lot of enemies on screen, but for the most part, there’s finesse, elegance and strategy on a level you don’t see very often.
In conclusion, playing Forspoken is pretty cool. It is polished, refined and well thought out. The script and story itself aren’t really a big problem, and despite the slightly too “witty” dialogue, Frey is a pretty solid protagonist for the most part. Not only that, the primary antagonists, Tanta, are terrifying and well realized so that every “showdown” feels exciting and decisive. However, there are huge problems with creating a sustainable, consistent pace in the game’s cutscenes, with frustrating segments like so-called “walk-and-talk” episodes and fragments of what could once have been whole, solid pieces of dialogue constantly replace each other without any sense of cohesion whatsoever. Also, the game completely refuses to give us coherent cutscenes without stupid dip-to-black effects and inserted gameplay segments that don’t matter. Athia is actually an incredibly interesting world, but as is so often the case with Forspoken, Luminous fails to hit the mark.
As described above, the game consists of a number of relatively recognizable activities, with most of these consisting of combat in one form or another, and this is where the game shines brightest with excellent boss fighters, a challenging enemy flora, and even a relatively well-functioning platforming gameplay here and there. The problems mainly arise when the Forspoken reduces the wind in your sails and slows down. Because when the tempo drops and the game control is taken away from you, you start to notice how brown everything looks and how ugly it is. Forspoken is definitely not a pretty game, and if you choose the 60 frames per second that the Performance setting offers for the Playstation 5, you’ll see pixelated character models, stiff facial animations and overly simplistic choreography. In motion it looks better, and for the most part, motion is exactly what Forspoken wants you to do, which thankfully makes it more acceptable that this isn’t a graphical masterpiece.
You may already have a negative image of Forspoken. Maybe you’ve played the demo, seen a bunch of gameplay and maybe judged that everything looks a little too brown and underdeveloped for you to want to sacrifice the hundreds of kroner that the game costs after all. I can’t say you’re wrong; the cutscenes are mostly shrugs and tend to be downright bad, the story is good but uninspired, and the gameplay isn’t particularly innovative in its structure. Again; The foreword should be better than it is.
But it can also be said that Luminous Productions has constructed a satisfying gaming experience, consisting of excellent spells, wonderful parkour exercises and a solid variety of enemies. That’s what you’re essentially spending your time with when playing Forspoken, and that’s why it’s so satisfying to play. You will see many different points of view from established media here, and that is both expected and of course perfectly fine. But instead of being part of the criticism that is sure to be directed at Square Enix, I want to reiterate one simple thing: it’s fun to play Forspoken, it’s entertaining.
That’s why I’m sure many will look at the final score and either think it’s too low or too high, depending on how you weigh the game’s individual qualities against each other. There are those who just want games that meet all the parameters before investing, which I can understand considering what games actually cost. For me, it’s important that Forspoken is mostly fun to play most of the time, but it’s a damn shame that the remaining parts of the game eagerly try to destroy that joy at every turn.
