The handful of bosses Frey encounters is also generally underwhelming. Changing abilities is convoluted even late in the game, I had to pause and think about which buttons I needed to hold to access certain weapons. I found a few I preferred, but success often meant switching to the sluggish weapon I didn’t particularly want to use. Frey has dozens of abilities to swap between on the fly, and taking advantage of enemy vulnerabilities means you're encouraged to do so often. Forspoken is an action game, but calling it a third-person shooter wouldn't be out of line, as most of Frey’s abilities function like magical guns. I was also happy with where the game leaves Frey at the end, both from a character relationship perspective and a continued post-game gameplay perspective.Ĭombat is consistently mediocre. None of the twists were particularly surprising, but they were well executed and helped contextualize why Frey is so angry and why she is so insistent on not being the hero, even when everything obviously demanded she moves in that direction. I also enjoyed the zoomed-out main path of the story. Thankfully, Forspoken’s story and dialogue improve the deeper you get.īy the end, I liked Frey’s overly vulgar and combative nature and her antagonistic relationship with Cuff, her invisible partner that lives on her wrist. From Frey’s cat, Homer, to the little girl who wins Frey’s heart by stealing her phone in Athia, every character’s role as a means to humanize Frey is too obvious, and her frequent and stubborn refusal of the hero’s call is hammered too hard.

The dialogue is also underwhelming and the storytelling is overly transparent. Athia’s environments look great, as does Frey when she moves through the world, but zooming in close for cutscenes shows some rough textures. Unfortunately, Forspoken makes a bad first impression. Getting from one place to another is Forspoken’s high point, and while no other element quite reaches the heights of how fun running and climbing are, Frey’s adventure isn’t without its highlights. Amidst that chaos, she falls into the land of Athia and is eager to leave the new, mysterious world where she inexplicably has superhuman combat and running abilities. She's also in the middle of a plan to flee New York City with a gym bag full of cash. Protagonist Frey begins the game running from the law and debt collectors. Forspoken is a game about movement and running.

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