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I love Square Enix’s bold new world; just don’t mind the dialogue - Forspoken Review
12K View2023-01-23
Life ain’t always easy for a Square Enix fan lately, what with the legendary publisher selling off its Western studios and vowing to continue to focus on NFTs. Do not despair, though: I’m here bearing the good news that Forspoken is a light in the darkness, a bright new hope for Square’s future. As a completely new IP from a group of developers who previously brought us Final Fantasy XV, Forspoken isn’t a perfect game, but it successfully shows off the boundless potential for creativity that this studio has while embracing a fresh approach to game design—fresh for Square, at least—and introducing gamers to a fascinating new world.
Immediately breaking with the high fantasy that developer Luminous Productions is known for, Forspoken opens in a modern-day New York City courtroom, where we are introduced to our hero, the eternally sarcastic Frey Holland. Frey is an orphan who was abandoned as a baby; now on the cusp of turning twenty-one, she finds herself struggling to survive in the big city, often turning to petty crime, and just as often getting caught. This latest chance at redemption, we’re told, is her last chance.
This New York City sequence essentially serves as a quick prologue, introducing players to Frey and her hard-knock life. Before long, though, circumstances sweep her along and she is whisked away through a magical portal to a fantastical world known as Athia. That’s right! Forspoken is an isekai. As a baffled newcomer to this strange world, Frey served as a perfect set of eyes and ears for myself.
She’s also joined in her journey by a companion that she snarkily names “Cuff,” because, well...he’s a talking cuff. (“I’m not a cuff, I’m a vambrace,” he regularly argues back.) While immediately setting up the almost fairy-tale-esque magical nature of the world, Cuff also introduces Frey to her own magical abilities.
Though Frey finds she is unable to remove Cuff from her arm while in the world of Athia, she also learns that wearing him enables her to use powerful magic, such as shooting bolts of energy from her hands, causing stone to erupt from the ground, and throwing up a defensive shield to protect her from attacks.
These spells quickly proved necessary, as Athia is quite a dangerous place. Throughout the first few chapters, Frey and I discovered that this world had been ravaged by a phenomenon that she calls “the Break.” Virtually every human settlement—villages, farmsteads, castles, and so on—has been abandoned, and wildlife ranging from goats to wolves to massive bears have all been transformed by the Break, turned into vicious, dark magic-fueled monsters that attack on sight.
I spent a great majority of my time with Forspoken taking on “Breakbeasts” in their various forms. It’s a process that might have gotten a little boring if not for the fact that, well, Forspoken just feels damn good to play.
Frey navigates the world using parkour abilities that allow her to bound up walls or leap through the air while maintaining momentum. Those parkour skills can be woven seamlessly into comment, turning fights into a satisfying ballet of dodging attacks, jumping around to gain a good vantage point, and whenever possible attacking enemies from the side or behind for bonus damage. It’s a system that builds off the action-RPG combat of Final Fantasy XV but manages to add more depth without making it feel clumsy or overly difficult.
It helps a lot, as well, that Frey’s range of magical abilities is quite huge...eventually, anyway. If there’s one mark I’d put up against Forspoken’s overall pacing, it’s that you can get pretty damn deep into the game before even realizing the scope of its mechanical offerings. I know, because I did!
All told, Forspoken took me about twenty-five hours to complete, but that was with a fair bit of rushing to make sure that I could write this review. If someone wanted to really take their time and sweep through the game’s absurdly giant map and complete every single activity, I can easily see it lasting double that time or even more. But even at my faster pace, it wasn’t until around twelve hours into the game that I unlocked the second of four total schools of magic spells that Frey gains access too. Until I hit that point, for all I knew I would be spending the whole game using these exact same spells!
Luckily, even that first batch of spells is quite fun, but as my arsenal expanded, I fell more and more in love with Forspoken’s exhilarating combat. Determining weaknesses for each new enemy became a fun strategic challenge, and I often found myself switching up power sets just to add in some variety, or see if I could take down an imposing foe in a new way.
In fact, Forspoken handles progression in general in a more engaging manner than most RPGs or open-world games. Frey levels up like you’d expect, but leveling itself only provides minor buffs; most of her actual power comes from spending mana that you’ve earned to unlock new spells, finding and upgrading new gear, completing challenges in the open world to get stat boosts, and upgrading individual spells through a series of compelling challenges.
I found those spell upgrade challenges particularly appealing, as they forced me to use spells I hadn’t tried yet and often taught me how to use them properly through the challenges. For example, one of the first spells that Frey gains access too allows her to raise up a plant from the ground that basically operates as a turret, shooting at nearby enemies. It always seemed pretty weak to me, until I got the challenge to upgrade that spell, which was to use it to take down a set number of flying enemies. At that point it clicked that this ability was specifically meant to give me an advantage against aerial baddies. And once I upgraded it, it proved to be at least a little more powerful against everyone else for good measure!
The new power sets and upgrades spells also apply to Frey’s navigational abilities, so the deeper into Forspoken I got, the more of its busted-up world that I was able to explore. This is another point where I initially experienced a little frustration, as I would try to go towards a specific icon on the map only to realize that I clearly was lacking the ability that would actually allow me to reach it. However, I found it supremely satisfying unlocking each new parkour skill and returning to old areas where I could now not only slay the local wildlife with little effort but could zoom around and get wherever I wanted to go. In many ways, it seems like the game trades a little awkwardness at the start for a greater sense of satisfaction by the end.
Speaking of a little awkwardness, I’ve danced around saying much about Forspoken’s story up to this point. There’s two reasons for this: First and foremost, the game’s plot has a lot of twists and turns that I don’t want to spoil for those who are excited to play it. But also, if there’s anything about Forspoken that runs the risk of pushing away people who I think would otherwise enjoy it, it’s the story—or more specifically, the dialogue, especially moment to moment.
Frey and Cuff serve as a sort of odd couple, with their relationship as a central focus of the game’s plot and how it develops. She’s a gruff, street-smart, smart-ass; he’s a haughty, overly intelligent jerk with a British accent just to really drive their differences home. And whether you’re in cutscenes or not, these two are constantly bickering with each other.
Pro tip: There’s an option in the settings for “Cuff Chat Frequency,” which allows you to lower how often banter happens. I strongly suggest dialing this down. I knocked it from “Default” to “Low” (the lowest possible setting before turning off all random exploration dialogue between them altogether), and even with that change, I still heard some of the same bits of conversation repeated well over a dozen times.
The problem with Frey and Cuff’s banter (and Frey’s dialogue throughout Forspoken in general) is not that it’s bad or badly written exactly. It just suffers from a terminal case of Whedon dialogue. You know, the snarky, everybody’s-a-fast-talkin’-jokester brand of writing that has become synonymous with pop culture in general thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? The inspiration is so obvious (and so annoying) in Forspoken that Joss Whedon trended on Twitter after one of the game’s trailers hit last year.
Tolerance for this style of sarcasm-heavy dialogue is going to vary heavily from person to person. For my own part, it didn’t come close to ruining the game, though it definitely had me cringing at times. But on the same note, Frey did grow on me eventually. It just took a lot longer than it would have if the game’s script didn’t go out of its way to have her offer a mean-hearted retort to even the most innocuous comments from the rest of the game’s broadly likable cast.
My greatest fear for Forspoken is that potential players will see a trailer with some particularly annoying lines and decide to skip the game altogether. So with that in mind, let me reiterate my point from the first paragraph: Forspoken presents an excellent spin on both open-world gameplay and the traditional Square Enix approach to role-playing games. It has some flaws and room for improvement, but it also provides a glimpse of what could be a bright future indeed—a future where crypto scams fall by the wayside and big, epic, narrative-heavy fantasy RPGs delight our imaginations once again. That’s a future worth hoping for, and one worth telling Square Enix we want.
SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5
PLAY IF YOU LIKE:
• Final Fantasy XV. Forspoken’s story takes more risks (for better and worse) than the more traditional JRPG stylings of Final Fantasy XV. The action-packed gameplay is definitely similar, though. If you enjoyed Final Fantasy XV’s approach to stylish battles, you’ll likely dig the way Forspoken builds on it.
• Isekai stories. Love it or hate it, isekai has become the most popular sub-genre of anime, manga, and light novel storytelling. If you’re a fan of franchises like Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (just to name a few), it’s probably worth checking out one of the shockingly rare original video game takes on this type of story from a major publisher.
💬 Is the goofy dialogue too much for you, or are you willing to give Forspoken a chance? Let me know in the comments if you’re planning to play it or skip it!
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The game sucks and its so bare bones. I love open world games but like this can't be accepted or OK just because it's ambitious
2023-01-27
I respect your opinion but disagree! I would love to see it expanded on in the future though. we'll see if this one actually sells
2023-01-27
Love this
2023-01-28
Author likedit costs more than elden ring's deluxe, it requires a high end pc just to run 30 fps, the difficulty changes nothing ai doesn't get harder it just has more health, and the lead is just unlikeable just rude to anyone throughout the game. Combat well it could have been polished more. Voice acting is decent you won't cringe or anything. Well that's what i learned about the game from watching MoistCr1tikal. Well mostly his words but yeah.
2023-01-27