Forspoken isn’t that bad, but it’s actually good in a way. review

Played on PlayStation 5

Frey, the protagonist of Forspoken, doesn’t have a very good life. When she was a child, her parents left her on the streets, she was never able to get an education or find a job. You have to break the law to survive, but you still don’t have enough money – the girl barely makes ends meet in a miserable apartment where there is a dirty mattress instead of a bed. She was able to save something, but the bag with the money burned down. Luckily, she didn’t have to live on the streets for long – she soon found a magical bracer that whisked her away to a brave new world.

Orphan in Wonderland

In Japanese culture, this phenomenon is called “Isekai” – when a figure from our time falls into a completely different one. Kind of like the plot of Alice in Wonderland – by “accidental” coincidence, this is Frey’s favorite book. In Forspoken we are in the Atia region: the local aristocracy sits in the senate and makes decisions useful to them, the townspeople scurry about, and the “peasants” work or rest in a separate area.

You can’t change your hairstyle (the heroine does it herself), but raincoats, necklaces, and fake nails can. All this affects the characteristics and strength of the protagonist.

An American from another era clearly doesn’t fit into such society, and the screenwriters do a great job of contrasting her with everyone else. She often references works from our world and tells familiar jokes, but those around her don’t always understand what she’s trying to say – you have to frame thoughts differently. They also don’t know modern swear words, and Frey likes to screw in obscene vocabulary. Such humor does not bother you – every time you listen with a smile to how the talking bracer or ordinary residents react to the heroine’s remarks.

She doesn’t remain a New York street hooligan from beginning to end of the game. It’s interesting to watch the character’s development – at first Frey wants to return to his homeland as soon as possible, then over time he becomes more and more infused with the problems of the locals. Atia’s main problem is the four powerful tant mistresses, due to which the areas around the kingdom are covered with a poisonous mist. Fog doesn’t affect Frey in any way, but it does turn other living creatures into zombies – both humans, who attack everyone they meet, and animals. Thus, only the heroine can get to the Tants and defeat them, restoring peace to Atia.

For the first time, the picture will please with quality only after several hours

The plot is rather cliche and the screenwriters use hackneyed and straightforward techniques – the narrative rarely manages to evoke emotion. The story is based on Frey – such atypical characters are rarely encountered in fantasy games, they quickly arouse sympathy. In many ways, this is thanks to Ella Balinska, who convincingly gave her voice to the protagonist and, thanks to good and appropriate humor, can endlessly listen to her verbal battles with a bracer.

Not the most outstanding script coexists with poor directing – its clumsiness is noticeable from the very first hours of the game: boring camera work, dialogues with static angles, and at the beginning and end of each video there is a blackout that almost immediately begins to annoy. You can’t get used to the fact that the heroine stands rooted to the spot for several seconds after each dialogue – you tilt the stick forward and wait for the move.

There are a lot of cats in Atia and beyond – the developers know how to placate the audience

Run without looking back

But in the open world, that happens much less often. Frey quickly learns the so-called magical parkour – she can accelerate, jump far, run along walls and fall from great heights and take no damage if she has even the slightest stamina left. Over time, more options will appear, similar to Metroidvanias: a whip you can grab onto rocks to climb higher, and the ability to ride water. By the end of the game, you’ll feel like Sonic, covering huge distances in a matter of seconds – I recommend turning on auto-select resources in settings so you don’t have to stop for them.

The locations are extensive, but the journey from one point to another is not tiring despite the long distances. Also, every now and then you stumble upon entertainment: either you meet a strong monster, or you find a monument that grants a bonus to traits or starts a time trial. You rarely access the map – while you’re running to the next story location, the game will warn you of valuable objects along the way. And there are also a lot of chests with resources marked on the map, but you can easily find them even without a map – just use the heroine’s abilities and explore the locations on your own. The contents of the chests are not strictly necessary, but still serve as a pleasant reward.

And here you can feel like Spider-Man

The biggest disappointment with the open world are the “dungeons”, dungeons where you can find new gear. They are exactly the same: several rooms connected by corridors in which you defeat all opponents and move on. No puzzles like in some Zelda, no interesting mechanics like in Immortals Fenyx Rising – you just fight everyone and in the end you meet the boss who is an enlarged version of a common enemy. It’s like everything was put together at the last minute.

Master of magic but no sword

Combat is never boring – the combat system, if used wisely, rewards active skill switching and always looks spectacular. Usually in games for mages you have to put up with skill recovery, lack of mana and other gameplay complications – here you can immediately either throw charged stones, or shoot them like a machine gun, and there are no timers. Over time, the heroine learns new spells, including those suitable for lovers of hand-to-hand combat.

It never gets boring to defeat whole groups of enemies with one hit

Everything is a little more complicated with auxiliary magic – techniques that allow you to slow down enemies or create objects that help in battle are not immediately available after use. However, if you’re actively dealing damage with attacking magic, the Auxiliary will recover faster. And the more actively you buy new skills in the level tree, the less time you waste – while one spell is inactive, you can switch to another that doesn’t have a timer. Well, it wasn’t without absolute skill – “ults” aren’t prohibitively devastating, but they can severely injure an opponent or thwart an impending attack.

All opponents have a weakness for one or the other kind of magic, so you try to pick up tactics against each opponent as spontaneously as possible, especially since the bracelet is able to scan enemies and thus give clues. In addition, Parkour should also be actively used in battles – if you attack in a fast run, the techniques will change. You do all this not only for the sake of the beauty of the fights, but also to get more points – at the end of each fight a score is awarded, which increases with each unique technique and with the effective use of all opportunities. Show yourself well – you can quickly earn points to buy a new skill.

You don’t have to feel sorry for the animals – you can’t save them anyway

Even if the “combat” isn’t ideal (for some reason you keep losing focus on the target), you start liking it pretty quickly, and with the emergence of new magic schools, you’re more and more drawn to it – you get bored Don’t get frustrated when you watch the riot of special effects. But outside of the battles, the graphics in Forspoken don’t quite live up to the promised “next-gen” – even if some locations look adorable, everything is spoiled by nightmarish lighting, and Atia looks like a city with its ubiquitous faded textures from a low-budget jRPG. The facial animation is also not impressive, and there are problems with animations in general – some actions of the main character (especially in side quests) are reported in the text without showing them.

***

Forspoken is best described with the word ugly. It’s hard to call her bad, and she doesn’t deserve the outpouring of negativity that hit her even before the release. The developers lacked experience, time or budget – the intentions were clearly good, the ambitions high, but not everything worked out. It is unlikely that the game will be so successful that Square Enix is ​​considering a sequel, but there is a feeling that in a few years only good things will be remembered about Forspoken – this is more than the case with this publisher’s games happened once.

Advantages:

• funny contrast between a guest from another world and the inhabitants of the kingdom;
• good mood – it is especially funny to listen to the dialogues of the main character with a talking bracer;
• moving through the open world at high speed is fun thanks to wall running, high jumps and other features;
• Spectacular combat system that offers more and more options as you progress.

Disadvantages:

• the blackouts that accompany each dialogue begin to tire quickly, as does the character’s immobility after each cutscene;
• drab dungeons in the open world;
• not the most original plot;
• Graphics aren’t as impressive as we’d like.

Result: 7.0/10

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