Forspoken Review
Forspoken, in a nutshell, is the woke open-world no-blood no-gore happier version of Devil May Cry 2 with outdoor Prototype-like parkour across a map reminiscent of Horizon: Zero Dawn, having impressive visuals and voice acting, fast-paced combat, and an interesting-enough main story that isn’t entirely unpredictable but seems to end before it really gets off the ground.
Starting Off
Forspoken—the 2023 debut game from Luminous Productions—begins with a woman named Alfre ”Frey” Holland being tried in New York for grand larceny, being granted another chance, then stealing a magical talking bracer and being swept through a portal to a fantasy land on the brink of destruction with seemingly no way back. The bracer (i.e. ”cuff”, i.e. ”vambrace”) allows Frey to cast spells and dart around with superhuman parkour. Lost in this new world of Athia, Frey seeks to find her way back home to her loving cat, Homer.
An interesting line is walked in the game; on one hand, there’s no blood or gore, and on the other hand, Frey swears like a fucking sailor. The frequent swearing creates a beautiful contrast with Cuff—the elegant noble-spoken traveling companion. Along with swearing, Frey tends to rename everything she comes across; and, surprisingly, everyone else goes along with Frey’s naming, too. Well, ”Time to go kill that bitch,” I guess.
World
Athia is gloomy medieval land ruled by Tantas (somewhat akin monarchs) who created the world and wield magical powers to keep the people safe and also destroy them—i.e. England with magic. The open world is massive with a Horizon: Zero Dawn feel dotted with points of interest which effectively amount to: kill enemies, get loot. The encounters are somewhat underwhelming and repetitive, though—especially the locked labyrinths which feel like something from a tech demo for a procedural RPG. Overall, the world of Forsaken is fun to dash around and explore for a while until the same encounters start cropping up with different backdrops.
At some point, there’s an infuriating event where the ”Break”—or whatever Frey names it at a given point in time—is so dense with corruption that it can be walked on or swam in; so, you jump in and float down to the bottom like a damn scuba diver while Frey comments on the feeling of breathing water. Ten fucking seconds later, still at the bottom, you blaze around in full-speed parkour like nothing changed. What the hell happened to the whole so-dense-you-could-walk-on-top thing? The writing is there—I was excited at the prospect of impaired movement—but the execution is disappointing: instant immersion break.
Similar to Mimir in God of War: Ragnarok, Cuff serves as a permanent source of narration and witty banter. Unlike God of War, though, the talking seems to start right before or during combat—only to be drowned out by the sounds of grunts, screeches, and explosions. I’m not sure if I caught even half of it since I couldn’t find a menu option for subtitles (apparently, it’s here, in retrospect); even though the cheap jokes and deep conversations weren’t always amazing, I would at least like to hear them...
Combat
The combat in Forsaken has some great features but ultimately falls short of being amazing. I ran the game on Hard difficulty, and most of the game was fairly easy; this is in part due to the dodging mechanic. Dodging simply requires you to be holding the parkour button to evade attacks; survival is somewhat trivialized despite the clear attempt to add unique mechanics in each fight. On the other hand, special effects tend to dominate the screen during fights, making enemy attacks difficult to see. All this results in some jumpy floaty flying combat that’s somewhat like Devil May Cry 2 with a ridiculous amount of particle effects.
Changing spells mid-combat is basically impossible with the overly detailed black-and-white icons—they look pretty, but figuring out which is which in a pinch is a bitch; memorizing the spell wheels is essential to effective spell swapping in battle. Adding to this, the spells effects all use the same fucking color, so good luck telling them apart. Fortunately, the spells aren’t paramount to success in Forspoken because normal and charged attacks deal most of the damage anyway; the cost of using spells seems to outweigh their benefit for the most part, at least on Hard mode. Switching spells is useful for the Devil-May-Cry-style combo system, but the increased-drop-rate reward is a bit underwhelming.
There is a level up system in Forspoken; however, I’m not actually sure what it does since I didn’t really take note of what level I was before hitting level 35 or so, and I completed the main story at level 42. Kill enemies, follow cats, dance, and progress other content, and you’ll notice an experience-gain graphic appear which oddly looks a lot like the People Can Fly logo.
Conclusion
Overall, Forspoken feels like a casual fast-paced button-mashing type of game with tons of open-world content, immersive side content, beautiful scenery, fun superhuman parkour, and a story that’s at least somewhat interesting. The voice acting is excellent, visuals are appealing, the world is immersive, combat is somewhat entertaining, and the main story is… meh. Overall, I don’t regret playing it; I’d play it again given an infinite amount of time.
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