Even still, it can be quite a satisfying way to fancifully flow from task to task without much thought. That said, it is also far more mindless than combat, requiring very little nuance even as additional techniques become available to you and rarely ever testing your mastery of those moves with difficult platforming challenges. Just like your attacks, this becomes a lot more fun once you unlock some cooler skills, like options that boost your speed with well-timed button presses. Similarly, the parkour system is a mix of straightforward and flashy, sending you nimbly soaring across the environment by simply holding down the Circle button and pointing yourself in a given direction. One-on-one fights can devolve into locking onto your target and holding down the trigger while you strafe out of harm’s way with Forspoken’s extremely generous dodge system, but the group encounters often did a good job of keeping me on my toes. For example, I loved that shielded enemies could be dealt with either by getting behind them or by charging an AOE shot and then firing it at the ground nearby to knock them off their guard. Enemy variety isn’t exactly impressive (special larger baddies in particular can be really cool the first time you fight them, but less so by the third), but elemental resistances and unique quirks pushed me to swap weapons and strategies frequently mid-fight in a way I really enjoyed. You don’t even have a melee attack until you unlock the fire-based sword option about a third of the way through the campaign, which was a little annoyingly restrictive at first.īut once you do open up more of Frey’s capabilities, Forspoken’s particle effect-filled combat becomes quite amusing. Her starting magic is basically an earth-based gun that can be fired rapidly or charged for an area-of-effect burst, with skills that root enemies to the ground, up your defense temporarily, and more. This is what you’ll be doing for the vast majority of your time with Forspoken, and it can be a lot of fun even if those systems never get too deep.įrey gains four styles of elemental magic over the course of the campaign, each essentially a different weapon you can quickly swap between with its own set of alternate fire modes and unlockable support skills – all of which can then be modestly upgraded as you play. That involves sprinting across Athia’s rocky terrain using Frey’s magic parkour skills, flipping over obstacles and eventually using a grappling whip to swing long distances, and then beating the snot out of enemies at various points of interest for new equipment and other rewards.

The performances throughout can actually be quite good, even when the writing leans heavily into telling rather than showing – but none of it is ever very fun to listen to thanks to long, awkward pauses between lines and occasional crowd noise or background music that’s so loud it drowns out everything being said.īetween visits to Cipal, you’re generally given a target on your map and free rein to get as distracted as you’d like along the way. I don’t think the Cipal sections would have bothered me if conversations and cutscenes didn’t have such a stilted, strangely low-budget feel to them. This dynamic never really changes, even as Frey slowly goes through the motions of her predictable hero’s journey, and it is always exhausting.įorspoken is essentially split into two parts: talking to townsfolk and doing mundane side quests like feeding sheep or chasing cats in Cipal, and making your way to some specific point of interest on its absurdly large map to further the story. Frey is surprisingly vocal about her disdain for most of the tasks Forspoken asks you to complete, and Cuff constantly belittles her for no good reason in a manner that I think is supposed to come off as friendly ribbing but instead feels like awkwardly watching a couple argue at a dinner party. That means the snippy banter between Cuff and Frey come off as obnoxious rather than endearing. The most egregious example of this is the chemistry between Frey and Cuff, which frames most of the campaign as a sort of buddy cop movie but spends almost no time showing these two unlikely partners grow closer after their introduction.Īctual bonding apparently happens off-screen, and this story – which is mostly told through exposition dumps between large stretches of open-world exploration – felt fairly rushed across the 15 hours it took me to beat the campaign as a result. That’s not so offensive on its own, but the real crime is how poorly the writing establishes any of its characters and the relationships between them – it’s like it constantly assumed I must already be invested in these people in a way it never actually made me. Forspoken’s world and story are about as bland as they come, equal parts predictable and forgettable.

Forspoken xbox