PS5 review code provided by Square Enix.
Video games have long struggled with the pull between their two disparate elements. The challenge to make a game fun to play while also telling a compelling story is one many developers fail to overcome, and the games that do manage to pull both off are heralded as the best in the genre. Even in the modern era, the delicate balance between gameplay and narrative eludes many game makers.
Forspoken is the latest game to slip into this pitfall. The sophomore outing from Final Fantasy XV developer Luminous Productions is a magical romp through the world of Athia as seen through the eyes of a disillusioned New Yorker. While exploring this world and taking down the many colorful creatures that call it home can be a joy, the narrative motivation to do so is simply nonexistent.
Story
Alfre Holland is a lifelong orphan struggling to survive on the streets of Manhattan with her stalwart, feline companion, Homer. When Fre runs afoul of some street thugs, she loses her apartment and the nest egg she’d been saving to finally get out of the city. Faced with more hardship and struggle, Fre stumbles upon a mysterious artifact that suddenly transports her to a mystical world filled with all sorts of dangerous monsters.
This world is Athia, and it’s suffering, too. There’s a strange corruption that’s overtaken most of the continent, transforming animals and people alike into monsters; the four witches that used to rule Athia benevolently have become twisted, insane despots; and there’s a dragon flying around that doesn’t seem overly fond of Fre.
Forspoken has all the elements of an epic, fantasy adventure, but it somehow manages to fumble most of these in the pursuit of an ongoing comedic tone. It feels as though the impressive writing team spent the majority of their time worldbuilding instead of plot crafting. The Tantas are formidable and interesting enemies, characters with intrigue and tragedy, but they fall flat in execution.
Most of this comes down to the dialogue. It’s not as bad as social media would have you believe, but it still leaves much to be desired. While most of the supporting cast spend their time taking the world seriously even as they try to find some scrap of joy, Fre can’t seem to make up her mind about how she actually views this world and herself. It’s possible that this could be a statement on her own lack of identity and struggle with her past, but that doesn’t come through in her words and actions.
The root of the problem is that Fre reads like a 22-year-old as written by a group of people in their 50s. She’s the perfect trope of the rebellious, down-on-her-luck YA hero, and while these types of characters can be interesting and profound, Fre never moves past being weirdly cynical and “cool” at all times. It colors every interaction she has with other characters, making every conversation feel repetitive before the game even truly begins.
It doesn’t help that the first two hours or so are extremely dull, as the game takes an eternity to even get to the first real bit of combat and exploration. Forspoken holds your hand so egregiously throughout most of its narrative sections that you literally can’t even walk around while people are talking. In fact, you can’t begin to move for close to 20 seconds after they’ve stopped talking, leaving Fre just standing in the middle of the road like a lump.
It's a shame that the story is so bland, especially because the world is so interesting. I frequently found myself wishing there just wasn’t any dialogue at all and that story was being conveyed through lore entries and journal pages. I gained a greater appreciation for the world and its inhabitants from these little notes than I did from any of the dialogue, and that’s a good sign that your game is just overwritten.
Gameplay
While Forspoken stumbles in the narrative department, it manages to pick itself up and keep limping along thanks to a surprisingly robust and enjoyable combat suite. There are multiple different types of magic to master, gear to unlock and upgrade, and powerful enemies to defeat, making for a fun, if a little uneven, gameplay experience.
Magic is at the core of Forspoken’s combat, and it has a pretty impressive suite of abilities for Fre to acquire and utilize. She starts off with her own magic style but can pick up three additional skill trees, each with its own attacks, support magics, and special passive abilities. You can acquire the resource to unlock more of these trees by either leveling up or finding special points scattered across the map.
There’s a solid loop of discovery and experimentation to the magic that I found extremely enjoyable at its best and mildly frustrating at its worst. Unlocking new abilities, stringing them together in battle, and then upgrading them by meeting certain criteria never got old, but the overreliance on the flow system and stamina did make some battles feel a little tiring.
The magical parkour or flow system feels like a slightly less fun version of swinging through New York in Marvel’s Spider-Man. It hits those highs far less frequently, but the few moments where it does hit just right feel pretty awesome. In battle, however, the flow gets a little cumbersome. Keeping your attention on a single enemy, even when locked on, can drive even the most iron stomach to motion sickness.
It also doesn’t help that the dodge mechanic is a bit finicky, as my battered and bruised Fre can attest to. Unlike games of a different genre, the dodge isn’t fine-tuned enough to really be a skill issue. It feels more like a latency problem, where the dodge just doesn’t always activate when you press the button. It’s a slight problem, but it came up often enough to sour my experience during some of Forspoken’s tougher fights.
Fortunately, the parkour side of it feels pretty good, and it makes getting around the world feel like a breeze. Once you’ve unlocked a few extra mobility options, it’s easy to flit from one end of a region to the other. This is great since there’s actually quite a lot to do in Athia and it’s not a small map but any measure.
There are quite a few different side activities to engage with, such as Locked Labyrinths that contain hidden treasures of the Tantas and special monuments that contain unique challenges. My favorites were the time trials, especially the ones that challenged you to race across an area within a set time using Fre’s parkour abilities. I only wished there were more of these and that they were a bit more difficult.
Audio and Visual
Forspoken is a game that epitomizes uneven characteristics, even down to its artistic style. The music in this game is striking, often hitting emotional peaks that took me by surprise. It creates an entire spectrum of atmosphere, setting the tone for a vast, magical world filled with beauty and peril. Dangerous, corrupted beasts sport their own themes, signaling the danger that Fre is about to encounter.
The visuals, however, are a strange mashup of gorgeous vistas and vibrant colors that would look at home in stunning games like God of War Ragnarok or Elden Ring. The game itself even addresses this, as Fre can take pictures with her smartphone to share with children back in the city of Cipal. The baffling tradeoff for this, apparently, leads to some of the roughest and most unappealing character models I’ve ever seen. Even in stronger visual modes, characters look perpetually surprised or out of place, and many environments look like they’re shrouded in a haze or plainly unfinished.
What Could Be Better?
Better writing. Or less writing. There’s definitely a little too much in terms of snide conversations and long-winded moments of exposition. Not all of it is bad, but you might need to rethink the structure of your story when it’s hard to not scroll social media while a crucial cutscene is playing. Smaller character moments hit more powerfully for me than anything in the main narrative, and I think dialing back on the attempts to make Fre relatable might have actually made her more endearing overall.
Verdict
Forspoken wants to be a game that does it all: great story, thrilling gameplay, and a vast, interesting world. And on some level, it has pieces of each of those things. Unfortunately, it can’t quite manage to bring them all together in a way that feels unique or even great. Forspoken is a fun romp through an occasionally beautiful world, but if you’re looking for anything more than that you won’t find it here.
Forspoken is available now for PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
