Forspoken, an action-RPG developed by Luminous Productions, is inspired by the popular isekai genre, in which characters from Earth are transported to a fantasy world. However, the game fails to capture the appeal of the genre and instead tells a largely forgettable story. The protagonist, Frey, finds herself trapped in the world of Athia and bonds with a sentient brace named Cuff. Together, they encounter a group of survivors living in the last city that is free from a dangerous miasma that transforms living creatures into monsters. Frey is the only exception, making her the ideal candidate to explore the miasma, find its source, and destroy it.
The game’s narrative setup is intriguing, but the characters, including Frey, Cuff, and the survivors, are uninteresting and unlikable. The game’s combat is also clunky and regular exposition often stalls the action.
Forspoken is a story about finding a place to belong and people to protect. The protagonist, Frey, is initially resistant to her new surroundings, but ultimately discovers that she is well-suited to the world she is trapped in. However, the game struggles to make the player feel invested in this world and its inhabitants.
The emotional connection the game tries to establish between the player and the characters is uninteresting and often confusing. The characters themselves are plain and uninteresting, with two-dimensional personalities and no real convictions. The characters’ facial expressions are stilted, further disconnecting the player from the emotional core of the story. The characters are not fleshed out, making it hard to understand why Frey should care about them. The game encourages exploration through the use of parkour abilities, which can be exhilarating but also frustrating due to a lack of precision.
In essence, the parkour system in Forspoken is a combination of simplicity and flashiness. Players can easily soar across the environment by holding a button and pointing in a desired direction. The system becomes more enjoyable as players unlock cooler skills and boosts, but it is generally less complex than combat and does not require much nuance. The parkour is satisfying for flowing from task to task without much thought. However, the game’s world, Athia, is vast, and the campaign only explores a small portion of it. The map is filled with optional side objectives, but they are repetitive and not worth completing unless playing on a higher difficulty. Overall, Athia feels more like a checklist to be completed rather than a world to explore.
Forspoken’s world, Athia, lacks interesting visual landmarks and is separated by artificial mountain ranges. Each of the four regions has a slight variation in layout, but they all blend together due to their similar appearance. After completing the campaign, the player may continue to explore the map but will find little incentive to do so as there are no exciting secrets to discover and the side tasks are repetitive. The game’s progression systems are not demanding and do not devolve into a grind, allowing the player to proceed at their own pace. The equipable items are limited to cloaks, necklaces and nail polish, which offer simple numerical boosts with little impact on gameplay. The crafting system allows for flexibility in gear choices, but it is not particularly exciting.
Forspoken is a familiar game with a stereotypical fantasy story and a large open-world map filled with repetitive side quests. Its combat is flashy and entertaining, but the variety of enemies is not impressive. The parkour system is satisfying, but the scenery is unimpressive. Some players may enjoy exploring every inch of the map, but the writer did not find a compelling reason to do so after finishing the main story.
Summary
It’s hard to recommend Forspoken. There are flashes of the game that are very fun and unique. But most of it feels like a generic slog. It just gets stale after a few hours.
