Forspoken

Square Enix and the Luminus development team take us to the magical world of Athea in Forspoken, an open-world action RPG game with parkour skills that has captured our attention and made us want to play since the game was first released has to experience this new adventure The Dreammakers of Square. It comes to us from the same studio that developed Final Fantasy 15 on last-gen consoles. We’ve tried Forspoken before and now we have the final version in our hands and here’s the final verdict.

Gameplay and Magic System

The game’s story revolves around a girl named Fry who moves to another world called Athea by finding a magical talking bracelet. She must save this other world from destruction, and she reminds us strongly of the stories and deeds of Isekai. A harmful toxic mist has spread across the other world, turning people into monsters, and Fry is the only one immune to it, and she must clear the mist to save the world of Athea. The world of Athea is ruled by four powerful magical women called Tanta, each of whom has a specific type of magic. Fry must eliminate them and gain their special magic one by one.

Gameplay depends on parkour style, fast movement and use of magic in battle. At the beginning you only have stone magic, and as the story progresses you gain new types of magic, such as fire and water magic. and you can also develop their various magical abilities. Each type of magic has its own development tree, and you can also combine magical blows, for example, using wind and fire to create an explosion, and so on. To be honest, the game system is something I have never seen in any other game. At first it seemed strange to me that you have to move and use magic at the same time, but with some practice I began to perform combined blows (combo). Complex, It does a lot of damage to enemies and that’s a lot of fun.

World Design and Boss Stages

The world of Athiya is very large and consists of several regions, and each region has its own environment. For example, the environment in the first region is rocky and in the second region it is fiery, volcanic and so on, but I didn’t like the design of the stages at all. Despite the different environment, the regions themselves are similar, with noticeable asset reuse. Graphics and the design of the map itself don’t fit in. You get the feeling that most of the areas exist without a purpose and not because they are part of the game world and its interconnectedness, and the design of the locations of the boss stages is also very bad , since it is connected to the open world in the game and this thing bothered me a lot, because in one of the fights I climbed the mountains and entered the palace and eliminated the monsters until I reached the boss, and a flying one Monster landed at the boss’s door and knocked me to the ground. to the beginning of the stage and I had to climb back up, which was very annoying for me.

Exploration and Side Missions

The boss fight was fun as it involved more puzzle solving than normal battles, and it took place in multiple stages, with new elements being added to the battle in each stage. I enjoyed the exploration in the game, but it remains limited. Despite the distribution of content across the map, it suffers from repetition. For example, there are corridor areas that take you to another location and you have to fight enemies and defeat bosses to get the loot. But the corridors inside are all similar and the bosses are repetitive, so it gets boring after a while. Now let’s move on to the side missions in the game, which is one of the things that bothered me the most. The side missions contribute nothing to the game in terms of story and become missions to bring tools without any logic or idea. For example, one of the missions was that I had to feed two sheep…not one, not two or three…ten! Their locations are scattered, so of course they bored me.

Let me tell you that Fry’s character is the most annoying character I have ever seen in a game. Her dialogue is very weak and vulgar and she tries to make a sarcastic joke with every sentence she says. The problem is that all the other characters in The Game are better than her in terms of dialogue, and I can understand why they made her that way because she’s a character from another world. But that doesn’t justify explaining their attempt to make every phrase suitable for printing on a T-shirt and selling, and the same phrases are repeated in the middle of battles or while eliminating enemies.

Graphics and Music

The game’s graphics are fine. Sometimes they amaze me with the effects and functions of the characters, but the repetitive environment in the game and the open world sometimes make me feel like it is an old generation game. The Luminus development team is undoubtedly talented on a technical level, but on a graphical level the game hasn’t made a huge leap with Final Fantasy 15. The animations and visual effects are wonderful, and the game also benefits from a 120Hz refresh rate with a screen that supports this speed to offer a smoother gaming experience while maintaining high quality. Graphics level. The music in the game is very wonderful and each track fits into its place, and that’s what we’ve come to expect from Square Enix games.

Final Thoughts

Forspoken is an ambitious game, but unfortunately the developers failed to design the levels and environment, and the game’s focus was much more on battles and combat. The character of Fry spoiled the experience for me and made it more like a cheap American movies with vulgar dialogues.

We tested the game using a PS5 copy that we received from the publisher prior to release