Forspoken

I got this game for free for buying AMD GPU, still feels scamed

This is a bad game in so many ways. Dumb cutscenes constantly interrupt you. This is not being hyperbolic either, it will have you cursing the game, because it prevents you from playing it. You are barraged with constant pop up notices that stop you from moving, and must be acknowledged. Slow loading notices about exp or new detours with long pauses of black loading screens between those notices, which also then loads another cutscene with the most uninteresting and mundane conversation on the planet. Even with the setting to reduce the banter, you and your companion will say the dumbest things far too often, and you can't shut them up. The writing is so cringe, the banter so low-brow, and so very incessant, makes this game unbearable. Even skipping through the dialogue, through slow loading dialogue choices, you'll find delayed awkward pauses as the game decides what to say next, or what modal pop up to show you. Combat can be fun, with enjoyable traversal and some interesting skills - but this frequently takes you to boring quests, more lengthy cutscenes, and unbearably slow scene transitions. While there are infrequent lighting issues or poor textures, overall the world is fair to look at, albeit frequently boring with long stretches of nothing. This is the series of events that just made me give up; 1.) Stopped to talk to someone with an icon that hints they have something to say. It was fantastically uninteresting commentary. 2.) Stopped to talk to someone else, had the same experience. I realize, after talking to many npcs, that this is a waste of time with no value. 3.) Decided which location I want to visit by opening the Map, which is not done using the M key like any sane person would, via the Tab Menu then click Map, then created a waypoint. 4.) Moved 5 feet and was interrupted by some cutscene with fantastically uninteresting commentary. After skipping through those 15 lines of useless dialogue, was shown a black screen where eventually a notice popup appeared, followed by another slow loading black screen with another pop up notice, followed by my character being immovable for 3 seconds while the game decided to give me control of my character back. 5.) Opened a door, and was met with yet another cutscene. Skimmed the dialogue, noticed it was of no value and uninteresting, so just started mashing the skip button. 6.) Now, finally, with control of my movement I pressed forward towards the open world in front of me. 7.) That last for 5 seconds, before my companion had something apparently important to say, and it stopped my movement so I could banter stupidly with him. Skimmed and skipped through that uninteresting conversation. 8.) Now, finally, again, I have control of my character and start making my way to a quest, and decide to go to a different waypoint, which was a little closer. 9.) Couldn't find a direct path to that location, so I travel far looking for an alternate path, and am presented with a notice that I'm too far from my objective, and am teleported back to where I started. 10.) Uninstalled game.

I wanted to love this game but several glaring issues prevented a positive review. The writing is bad; the combat is convoluted; the story incomplete; and it was, generally, very difficult to care about the people in the world. I should mentioned SE actually shifted staff from FF15 to work on Forspoken. That's why a lot of the planned DLC for FF15 was canceled. The game even looks like FF15. [b] Writing [/b] The game had 4 writers and the writing is...bad. My primary issue with the writing is the lack of character development and character psychology. • Frey is an orphan. In New York. None of what she does in the game reminds the player that she was an orphan. She has two cliched tropes: loner and rebel. Why does she rebel? Give the player an example of Frey's current rebelliousness by showing us previous interactions with authority figures. She’s a loner? Why? • She was supposed to steal a car for the gang she’s a part of but was caught (hence the court appearance). The gang doesn't care about the circumstances, only the failure (surprise, surprise) and try to harm Frey. How did she get involved with this gang? Frey's 23 years old and weighs no more than a sack of wet rice. A young, female orphan in New York keeps her head down. • Give us a reason to sympathize with the protagonist. Thus far, she was present as a willing participant in criminal activities. I don't understand why we ought to feel sympathy? I think the writers thought we'd sympathize for Frey because she's an orphan, in spite of everything we had been given about Frey up until that point. Show us why would sympathize, not tell us. This is rule 1 in any basic creative writing course. The dialogue is worse. Everybody has seen the videos. As a reminder, Frey's mocap and voice actor, Ella Balinska, is British. She speaks American the way American is spoken in English language dubbed anime. • Nothing about what she says and how she says it is uniquely New York. She is transported to a new world and speaks to the people there like she's still in her own world (with both slang and jargon). • What's worse is the inhabitants of that world understand her. I don't see how that would be possible. Children can't change their speaking habits to accommodate the people they're speaking to because they don't know how. What's Frey's excuse? The lore is interesting. The world is split into region and each region is ruled by a "Tanta". The world is being corrupted by something Frey names "the break". I won't spoil too much, but [spoiler] the town she goes to is attacked by an avatar of one of the Tantas. After defeating the avatar, she's told she has to kill the real Tanta to actually stop her. That's a line Frey doesn't want to cross, but ends up crossing anyway. [/spoiler] • The townsfolk are putting a lot of pressure on Frey to save them and she starts to buckle. This would make sense if we knew anything about Frey's psychology specifically. • Frey is clearly overwhelmed by everything that is happening to her, but she lashes out. Why? We get bits and pieces of cliched responses about being orphaned and her fear of abandonment, but what does that have to do with the townsfolk? They didn’t do anything to Frey. • She behaves the way a loner and rebel would behave: selfish and egoistic. But nothing thus far has given us any indication as to why Frey specifically should be behaving this way. What happened to her to cause her to behave this way? What happened to her that she has sheer disdain for people who are facing annihilation? • The writers were given several opportunities to make us care about Frey, or, at the very least, flesh out her psychology a little more to give us pivotal information about her development so we might even root for her, but, unfortunately, they failed. Everything about Frey is something the writers assume we should generally know about being an orphan in New York. She remains totally unlikable for about 4/5 of the game. I don't understand why writers think players want to spend 40 hours with unlikable characters. [b] Combat [/b] I really disliked the combat. It's entirely possible that I didn't understand the combat and chaining different elements together for more powerful combos, but I didn't do any of that and beat the game. Enemies have weakness, and once you find them you can switch to that element and spam attack. • There are 4 elements and each attack in each element has three levels of charge. You can depress the attack button once for a single attack or hold it to allow the attack to charge. OR you can dash into a full level 3 charge. • The game has 105 total spells spread across the 4 elements. How are we supposed to sift through all those spells in combat? This necessarily forces the players to chose the most powerful spells and stick to those. This game, from a combat perspective, is basically FF15-2. • SE released major patches to address some of the issues with the combat, even allowing players to switch specific combat mechanics off. This tells me they oversold the combat to SE and what they planned did not translate well. • There is a dodge, but it doesn’t work as a dodge per se. It doesn’t actually create distance, so any AoE attacks will hit Frey no matter what, disincentivizing close range combat. • Without a functional parry system, open world action RPG’s will always have a subpar combat system. The game does have its positive attributes. The world is gorgeous. The colors are vibrant and work well together. The voice acting, aside from Frey, is done well. These, obviously, aren’t enough to save the game. I beat the game, spent over 100 hours in it and got every achievement so my review would be presented with as much objectivity as possible.

I gave this game a fair shot. The graphics are good and the parkour is fun but that is about where this game stops. You can tell it fizzles out. The map is extremely large and the developers just slap the same random things to do over and over. It is similar to a Ubisoft game. I asked myself a couple times why am I even doing this and there isn't an answer. The actual purpose of why you are doing anything is thin. If you were to focus on only the story, the game is short. This is why they shoved so many fetch quest items across the map to make it seem like there is more to this game than there actually is.

For some reason, people do not like this game. Most people say it's the writing... I don't know - it's a girl which used to live on the streets of NY, getting tossed into a magical kingdom. She talks like she does, what is the problem here? She can move s**t, with her mind! :) The combat system is solid and fun, there's lots of skills to experiment with. The story is alright, generic fantasy stuff. The only downside to me is the lack of look customization. It's pretty much just the cloak. Everything else always looks the same. I say it's an ok game. I have fun with it, that's all that matters. I like it when studios try to invent some new IPs instead of just adding a number at the end.

The Good: * very nice combat + magic, that really hooks you in * graphics is pretty * music is nicely done * the world is not "empty", like some reviews say * Cuff - he was sassy, sarcastic, his responses to most interactions were the good parts The Bad: * optimization is non-existent - this is the only game I know that freezes every time I open a map and even running and loading was simply terrible * small - I have 18 hours and I already finished main story - and it's not like I was just going for main story, I was exploring, I was checking several labyrints, I was upgrading magic, finding familiars, etc. * story - it's not bad, but it's.... weak. For AAA game, this was supposed to be much better and it really isn't. * main character is unbearable - to a degree like Game of Thrones's Joffrey. If you will play this, you will spend several parts of the story thinking "what is her problem" Conclusion: this game could have been so good. The combat, sort-of open world and graphics gave it solid standing. But the optimization, the shortness of the main story and the marketing hype set it doomed to failure. It is NOT worth the full price, I'm not even sure if it's worth the price after 70 percent off (usual sale, it seems). It's interesting experience and I basically played it for closure of the story (and Cuff), but this is not something to be recommended. There are better games out there.

8/10 in general 9/10 if you like deep magic systems, open worlds and a modern take on magic. After 64 hours and 100% completing the main game and DLC i can only say that people are idiots. The game is amazing and its reputation and potential for a sequel were ruined by sexist idiots that dont like strong women or female main characters. The game has its criticisms, like any game, but its far from a bad game, its actually really good. The magic system is by far the most amazing part, so much variety, over 50 different spells, each with their own use depending on combat style and enemy you are facing, the gear is just enough to be interesting but not overloaded to get annoying. I wish it could have its sequel, but sadly those hopes are ruined by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I didn't even want to write this review, but while going for 100% completion in this game, I almost lost my mind, so I HAVE TO vent about it to preserve my sanity. 🟢 The Good The Core Gameplay: First things first: the game is actually fun to play, which is why I tried going for 100%. The game is quick, responsive and fun to play with a unique twist to the combat system... at least initially. 🔴 The Bad The 20-Hour Wall: The thing is, the game is only fun for the first 20 hours or so; after that, it becomes straight-up torture. It feels like a social experiment to see how long someone can do the same thing over and over again before going crazy. The Combat System Illusion: While it is fun at first, you're going to reach a point where every encounter simply revolves around spamming every single ability you possess with little to no strategy at all, transforming one of the positives of the game into yet another con. An empty Open World: The way they handled the open world is borderline insulting. There is nothing to discover, nothing to interact with, and no secrets. Just the same activity repeating itself a billion times because the developers couldn't help but copy-paste over and over and over again. The Story & Writing: Speaking of the story... Yeah, it's actually trash, there is really nothing else to say. The concept was cool, but the writing must've been done by a 14-year-old. It's so bad that sometimes I couldn't believe what I was watching. ⚠️ Final Verdict Seriously, you can finish the main story and all the side quests in about 20 hours, after which you're left with literally nothing but the exact same activity for the rest of your playtime. If you ever want to play this game, I recommend completing the story, enjoying the gameplay for what it is, and then dipping out immediately. Unfortunately for me, I like to 100% games and, as I said, I was actually enjoying it at first, so I thought to myself: "I'm almost done, I'll just go for it." Little did I know I was about to experience hell. The crazy thing is that it didn't even take me that long, but the repetitiveness was just too much to bear. What a shame.