Forspoken Review: A Mixed Bag of Tricks

I’ve always had the desire to see more urban fantasy video games. These games tend to mix fantasy elements with a modern setting and sometimes it’s the other way around. Games like Wolf Among Us and Devil May Cry 5 are great examples of urban fantasy games. Bioware’s now-canceled game Shadow Realms also seems like it would have been a great example of this gaming sub-genre. This is what made me so interested in Forspoken. Unfortunately, I ended up walking away from the game with mixed feelings.

A Mixed Bag of Tricks

Let’s start with some positives about the game. The combat is very fun especially once you unlock the other types of spells. The demo did a pretty bad job of telling you how to play the game. Going through the tutorial during my playthrough taught me how to play versus reading Reddit comments to understand how to play the demo. You start with one type of magic known as Frey’s magic. This spell set feels like playing your typical third-person shooter. You’ve got rapid SMG gunfire with the Scatter Shot and shotgun-like fire from the Burst Shot. These spells combined with the game’s excellent magic parkour turn you into a mix of Doctor Strange and The Flash. It feels so satisfying to just zoom through a forest quickly and kill a group of enemies within a minute.

Forspoken’s Cosmetics Grant New Abilities

In addition to magic, Frey can also use different cosmetic items to gain abilities and bonuses. Throughout the game, you can find necklaces, cloaks, and nail polish patterns, known simply as nails. Finding the right combination of gear can turn you into an unstoppable force. Unfortunately, there’s no real reason to experiment as I found one cloak less than ten hours into my playthrough which was much better than every cloak I found for the rest of the game. The same can be said for necklaces and nails. It doesn’t seem that the gear you find is scaled properly with your current upgraded gear and that’s unfortunate.

Another highlight of Forspoken is the game’s story, well at least some of it. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say the overall story of the game is pretty interesting. You play as Frey Holland, a young woman with a criminal record who’s mysteriously teleported from New York to the land of Athia. Here she becomes bonded with a gauntlet she calls “Cuff” and gains magical abilities. The two then set off the save Athia from the corruption that is killing it. I enjoyed Ella Balinska as Frey and the rest of the voice cast. People act like the dialogue is the worst thing ever but it’s really not and is basically nonexistent outside of story missions if you adjust it in the game settings. I ended up turning it on again because it got boring hearing the orchestral score over and over again while exploring the open world.

As mentioned before, I’ve been wanting to see more urban fantasy games and Forspoken comes very close to being an excellent one thanks to the story. Frey’s journey from the streets of New York to the land of Athia is filled with tons of triumph and tragedy. The bond she forms early in the game with one character is very touching and cute and I would have loved to see it fleshed out more but some questionable writing left me feeling disappointed as do other parts of the story I won’t spoil for you.

Detours Distract from the Main Story

Now on to what I dislike about the game. One of my biggest gripes might have to be the side content. My playthrough clocked in at about 16 hours and 39 minutes. Going in I had heard the game was only 15 hours long and so I decided to spend my time doing as much side content as possible. This leads to another complaint of mine, the boring side missions aka Detours. The first one I did had me taking a tour of the city which led to a boring walking segment ripped straight from God of War: Ragnarok which led to an even more boring mission where I had to feed sheep.

After doing that I basically decided to not really do the Detours anymore. The other side content consisted of clearing enemies out of certain areas to get XP or find some gear. Ultimately, this content feels pointless. Once you find a piece of gear and upgrade it consistently, it will be better than anything else you find for the rest of your playthrough. I found myself seeking out this side content just to fight enemies rather than get a reward I know will be worse than whatever I had equipped.

When I wasn’t doing side content, I was suffering through the poorly designed story missions which feature some questionable game design. Constantly throughout the game, I noticed these awkward pauses between dialogue that just ruined the flow of the story. Another annoying thing I noticed is that the game will constantly make you walk for about 10 or 15 seconds before throwing you into a cutscene. If that’s not bad enough for you, there are points after a mission where Frey can talk to Cuff about what just happened. Now this sounds fine, right? Maybe you get a little character development between the two and learn a bit more about the story.

The only problem is that you can’t move during these segments and have to stand still and listen to every single dialogue choice you select. Keep in mind Cuff is right on Frey’s arm. He’s not a person standing in a city. The game could easily let you run across a forest while you ask him about a certain character you just met for the first time. Why they don’t is baffling to me but at least these segments are optional.

Glitches and Bugs Hamper the Experience

Speaking of baffling decisions, the game was delayed from September to January and still has major performance issues. I played Forspoken on a PS5 in performance mode and experienced constant framerate dips from 60 to about 40-something frames. This always happened when a lot of enemies and explosions were onscreen. I also dealt with constant freezing that made me think my console was going to crash but thankfully it never did. If you decide to play this game, you’re gonna want to play in performance mode for the best experience. In fact, that’s what I was told in my email that came with a review code for the game so even they knew it was in a bad state.

I really enjoyed parts of Forspoken but overall? It’s a mixed bag. I had a lot of fun with the combat and parts of its story but the game is held back by awkward game design, some bad writing in the story, and performance issues. Everyone has called it a flop, especially after it sold less than Hi-Fi Rush on Steam, a game that was announced and released on the same day following the release of Forspoken. With the way the gaming industry is nowadays, the chances of a sequel are slim which is a shame. There’s so much potential here but ultimately it’s wasted. Maybe Luminous Productions can have a Cyberpunk 2077-like comeback win over more fans but that seems unlikely.