Forspoken

Forspoken would be a passable PlayStation title if it were released a decade ago, but it drops the ball as a contemporary AAA game due to its awkward voice performances, muddy visuals, and many bizarre design choices.

Forspoken feels like an interesting blend of gameplay elements from Square Enix projects past and present, but we're not certain it all comes together. A middling story and combat make its fun parkour harder to bear.

Its parkour system is also satisfying enough, despite the scenery you are running through being about as picturesque as a bowl of rocks with an Instagram filter slapped on. There’s a kind of person that might be enough for, happy to spend hours and hours uncovering every inch of Forspoken’s needlessly large map after the main story, but that doesn’t mean I was able to find much reason to do so once the credits had rolled.

Given the opportunity to dare, Forspoken chooses to play it incredibly safe, with muddled pacing and strict adherence to both narrative and gameplay tropes holding it back from reaching its groundbreaking potential. Regardless, its dazzling visuals, charismatic leads, memorable boss battles, and energetic and varied combat will reward the more patient player with a solid, spellbinding adventure… And, for everybody else, there are magical cats.

Forspoken was once one of the big reveals for the PS5 in 2020, but aside from using the SSD for open world magical parkour and the ultra quick fast travel, it is difficult to really see how it takes advantage of the latest console generation. The world of Athia looks good, and the combat full of flashy magic, but there's no major side quests to divert from repetitive activities and a predictable main story.

Forspoken should have been the start of a great new original IP from Square-Enix. Unfortunately, its enjoyable gameplay is marred by terrible dialogue and an obnoxious protagonist. This is a game that's hard to recommend to anyone.

There's something here to get stuck into for fans of open world adventures, and Forspoken isn't without its charms, but like Frey herself, it's often its own worst enemy.

Bad enough that both the plot and the writing barely fashions anything remotely interesting or easy on the ears, it’s what excuse Luminous have for a world to explore that ends up the true let-down across a sub-twenty hour adventure. Underwhelming, at times shockingly so, for all its emphasis on parkour, traversal and the brisk pace magical abilities can bring, Forspoken seems stuck in a kind of regressive, backward-thinking form of game design that ultimately it has no answer to.