Forspoken
Developer: Luminous Productions
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed)
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $69.99 USD – Available Here $114.95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
Fish out of water stories are a great way to see how different characters will react to being placed in completely ridiculous situations and while the concept is far from new, it has seen quite a resurgence over the last decade. Most of these stories come in the form of “Isekai” that see a teenager or adult, either through death or mysterious transportation, find themselves transported from their normal humdrum life on Earth to a fantastical realm where they are given great powers that can shake the new world to its core. With Square Enix and Luminous Productions’ Forspoken players will find themselves firmly set in the most generic storyline possible with plenty of great magical powers and quick-footed parkour abilities at their fingertips.
Story
Frey Holland never had much of a chance at a normal life. Found abandoned as a baby in the Holland tunnel in New York she has spent her twenty years of life in turmoil leading to a life of crime that has culminated in a lengthy criminal record based around thefts. Frey manages to avoid being thrown in jail for her latest crime by a lenient judge who let’s her off with a slap on the wrist for the holidays but warns that this is her last chance. What little fortune Frey has is quickly used up as a street gang that had been pursuing her sets fire to her abandoned apartment, burning any chance of a better future away while also placing Frey and her cat on the street.
After giving her cat to her judge in hopes of giving it a safe home, Frey returns to where she was found as a child and before she has a chance to do something she cannot take back, a mysterious vambrace catches her eye. With the expensive looking jewelry offering a chance to set her life back on some sort of track, she quickly steals it only to find herself transported to the fantasy realm of Athia.Not only does Frey find herself trapped in this magical land but Cuff as it is called now speaks directly in her mind and has bonded with her, making it impossible to remove. Cuff explains that Frey’s mysterious transportation to this land has placed her in great danger as “The Break” has ravaged the land for some time turning almost every living creature into a monstrous shell of itself and forcing the few normal residents to take shelter within the last standing city Cipal. With the lands’ former rulers and protectors, the Tantas, twisted by the corruption into being its new torturers, Frey finds herself in a strange land with perhaps the only power and resistance capable of fixing the land and setting the people of Athia free from the Break.
That is if Frey can manage to stay out of her own way for any length of time without either blowing up at random people wishing to help her, making jokes during the game’s few meaningful moments, or simply acting genuinely unlikable throughout the first half of this roughly twenty hour journey that sees her uncaring almost hostile attitude eventually shift towards wanting to help those around her and making some effort to conquer her trauma. As such, one must wonder what the writers for Forspoken were thinking when it came to crafting Forspoken’s storyline as well as trying to develop the few actual characters in the story that have any meaning since the story is so incredibly bland and predictable that anyone even remotely familiar with isekai tropes or paint-by-numbers drama will be able to predict everything that happens throughout the game. Even major twists that are meant to be a surprise that would turn the story on its head are telegraphed and are not only quite obvious but not they aren’t even given time to actually sink in since the story is quickly rushed along or ruined by a bad joke.
It doesn’t help that while players will find various documents and other pieces of writing throughout Forspoken that try to expand a bit on the world’s lore, almost everything narratively happens in the form of lengthy lore dumps that are spaced between the open world sections of the game. This poor pacing gives everything a fairly rushed feeling to it even though players can spend hours running around and taking care of little objectives in the open world or taking on “Distractions” that serve as side-quests but only occasionally provide a bit of extra character building. As a result, only a few of the characters are given any time to really grow on the player and those that do see some development aren’t given time to actually shine with it. Of course there are also magical cats that players can tame and visit at any safe house which is always a plus. Otherwise nearly all interactions that Frey will have happen with Cuff.
Despite being bonded together, Frey and Cuff’s interactions with one another rarely comes off as playful banter. Whether players are in the middle of a story cutscene or simply exploring the world, Cuff will chime in with thoughts about what is happening, often either encouraging Frey to actually care about helping the people of Athia or poking fun at her while she curses at the drop of a hat. Occasionally these back and forths between the two can be rather entertaining but these moments are few and far between as most of their exchanges are cringeworthy at best. In fact, especially since Frey and Cuff have only so many interactions before they quickly begin repeating themselves, players have the option to adjust just how much banter they will actually hear between the two. This means players can completely silence the talkative treasure should they please and let Cuff only speak for story segments or even increase the dialogue above normal should they feel like a bit of a masochist.
Gameplay
As players enter the world of Athia they will find that their initial few hours will actually be rather limited and slow as the game takes far too long before it allows players to truly run free. These initial hours are slow and serve mostly as small tutorials to ease players into various aspects of the game, including how to use basic magical attacks and support spells together while dodging attacks, while also holding players’ hands through drawn out story sections. Once players finally get their first taste of freedom outside of the walls of the town of Cipal that is where things quickly begin to come together.
One of the most striking and standout elements in Forspoken comes in the form of its traversal system which is based almost entirely around freerunning and parkour. Right away players will find themselves easily able to sprint at high speed and leap over small obstacles and walls with ease before quickly gaining the ability to launch themselves further up larger walls and this is only the tip of the iceberg here. As players progress through the game and obtain additional forms of magic, Frey’s ability to navigate the world grows in leaps and bounds, providing her abilities that allow her to zip along tether points on mountains, float across gaps, surf across water, and much more. This parkour and freerunning aspect to move around the world is also only half of how enjoyable it can be to run around since this freedom of movement plays heavily into combat as well.
Whenever players encounter an enemy or group of enemies the camera will begin to focus on the foes with players being able to lock on to a target should they desire and one of the key concepts to fighting in Forspoken is staying on the move. Players can freely run around the battlefield blasting away at enemies using multiple types of magic, jumping into the air to dodge attacks or around an enemy while continuing the onslaught, and even attacks that do manage to land on Frey often don’t break her momentum and give players plenty of opportunity to strike back. It is interesting to note that Forspoken is not a hard game by any means on Normal difficulty so players can choose to opt for more difficult fights if they so please but Square Enix has also offered a number of accessibility options to make the game available for everyone. This includes the ability to auto-swap to support spells that aren’t on cooldown, decreasing or increasing the damage dealt to monsters or to the player, and most of all auto-dodging that, when briefly tested, saw Frey nimbly dodging every attack coming her way outside of Area of Effect blows from boss style enemies.
When Frey isn’t jumping and flipping around the battlefield to avoid incoming attacks she deals out plenty of elemental damage on her own. Initially players will find their spells a bit limited as Forspoken does take a bit of time to unlock additional elements for players to use, lacking a proper melee ability until players complete the first major boss, but as players make their way through each main area in the game they will find Frey’s arsenal growing rather extensive. As players run around the battlefield they will be able to target Break-stricken enemies with a wide array of spells ranging from initially throwing rocks with earth spells to wielding a flaming sword or even raining down powerful finishing blows on an entire group with water magic.
Every spell that Frey unleashes is a visual spectacle and while many can be fired quickly for small amounts of damage, many spells have different tiers and special effects when a charged blow is unleashed. Alongside these active attack spells Frey can make use of a number of support spells that have their own cooldown timers that can range from healing Frey mid-fight to binding an enemy and more and her abilities grow even stronger in the form of powerful ultimate attacks that charge up as players deal damage. Slinging these spells is great fun and makes combat easily one of the best parts of the game, especially when combined with the great movement mechanics that make some battles truly feel like a dance of destruction. This is fitting as the game even has something of a “style” meter that rewards players with increased XP and item drops the more players chain spells together and attack enemies from the back and sides while avoiding incoming damage. Unfortunately some of these abilities do feel like they come a bit too late in the game depending on how much players spend in the open world compared to mainlining the core storyline and it is also worth noting that, outside of boss battles, the elemental weakness and resistance system rarely feels like it plays a factor in most battles as grunt enemies are often too easy and rarely get harder even in the final areas of the game.
The open world that players explore outside of the city of Cipal is vast in size but unfortunately also rather barren. There are some semblances of life as well as a few nice looking locales but these are rare occurrences in what is generally generic landscape filled with plantlife, ruins, or occasionally some colorful rocks and crystals in the rare interesting locations. The open world is filled to the brim with check-list style tasks that players can tackle and while some may not be reachable immediately, players will quickly find nearly every challenge within reach. These can range from simply taking down a group of enemies and opening a chest nearby, facing off against a an exceptionally powerful mutated foe, cleansing a shrine for a stat boost, and even exploring underground dungeons to obtain both powerful equipment as well as a bit of backstory about the world of Athia. Keeping an eye on where to go is an easy affair as players can not only place multiple waypoints down on the map but Cuff can be used to provide both a direct path towards Frey’s goal as well as scan the surroundings to uncover everything from collectable resources, mana wells that provide skill points when traveled over, treasures, and enemies that can be taken down in the area.
As players complete various side objectives in the world they will gather various pieces of equipment that Frey can wear. This includes cloaks, necklaces, and manicure types for her nails. Each piece of equipment can be improved using material gathered from the world to increase Frey’s health, defense, and the amount of damage she deals with certain spell types. Each piece of equipment can also be further customized to provide various other effects that unlock as permanent options every time the player obtains a new piece of gear with that effect automatically applied. This leads to plenty of fun customization but unfortunately players will find that there is, at least for now, no way to take their powered up character beyond the end of the story. Sure, players can return to the open world and travel around to clean up things they may have missed before finishing the game but unfortunately there is currently no form of New Game Plus which is a disappointment thanks to how late some powerful abilities are unlocked in the main story.
Visuals & Audio
Forspoken is something of a tale of two games when it comes to its graphical presentation. The city of New York is gorgeous looking while the main city of Cipal in Athia is fairly dull in design just like the open world that players will be spending most of their time in. There are a few locations that are a bit impressive looking but otherwise players will be spending most of their time navigating an incredibly dull open world filled with monsters that come in far too few varieties to remain interesting for long. Even the game’s character models are a bit on the hit and miss side as many main characters are gorgeously detailed but they often stand right alongside poorly detailed background characters. It also is worth noting that story sequences do not handle skipping dialogue well. This means if players are reading ahead of the spoken word, the game will stutter and jump characters around in incredibly awkward fashion. As for where Forespoken’s graphics shine, it all focuses around the magic. Zipping around enemies and unleashing flashy magical attacks looks absolutely amazing and, when playing in performance mode, the game flows perfectly fine with no slowdown. This includes everything from the smaller magical blasts to powerful super attacks that can fill the entire screen with explosive destruction that is a sight to behold.
The voice work in Forspoken is handled fairly well with all of the characters performed adequately enough and there are multiple language options available including a very satisfying Japanese voice track as well. There is a nice feature with the DualSense controller that has Cuff speak through the controller as well as in-game. The soundtrack also happens to contain some rather impressive tracks, including an exceptional main theme song that fits the game perfectly.
Overall
Forspoken feels like the type of game that has so much potential but manages to squander it through poor writing and a dull open world filled with check-list style objectives. The writing in Forspoken is as generic and predictable as it comes but zipping around the open world and using Frey’s magical abilities to their fullest makes combat incredibly enjoyable. It is just a shame that players can’t take full advantage of many of her combat and traversal abilities till late in the game and must do so in a bland world that rarely makes the most out of what Forspoken has to offer.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
