Forspoken hands-on preview: The PS5’s next big exclusive?
(Pocket-lint) – Forspoken stands out as an interesting part of Square Enix’s lineup of games in the coming year or so, lacking the big brand of Final Fantasy 16 but featuring a large open world that shares some visual cues with that game. From the sounds of it, it’s a bit of an experiment for Luminous Productions under Square Enix, the studio’s first standalone title. We got to play around four hours of the game’s early chapters recently.
Here’s how we think it’s shaping up.
Our quick take
We had a mixed time with Forspoken – moving through its world felt good when we had time to really sprint around and explore, but its story had a habit of getting in the way. It’s entirely possible that this is something that it’ll earn more thoroughly when it releases, but the early version we played felt a little bit unbalanced on this front. Similarly, some sprightly magic effects and detailed rock formations and landscaping didn’t stop the game from looking a bit bland overall, and we’re less confident of how much that’s likely to change.
As an experiment with the Luminous engine that powers Final Fantasy games, Forspoken is shaping up to be an interesting bit of output. But if Square is hoping it’ll launch a new tentpole franchise, we’re feeling somewhat less optimistic.
Forspoken hands-on
For
- Vistas look great
- Combat effects are dazzling
- Big areas to explore
Against
- Combat feels a tad imprecise
- Script isn’t stellar
- Frey will divide opinion
A new world
Trailers have already made it clear that Forspoken opens with our protagonist Frey being transported mysteriously from New York to the world of Athia through a portal. We picked the game up just after this transportation, playing Frey’s earliest moments in Athia as she discovers that the strange talking wrist cuff she’s wearing has given her magic powers.
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In our time with the game, these were limited to earth-themed moves but the final product will include firey magic and other elements, too.
The main gameplay loop (after some preamble in the course of discovering her powers) involves Frey running around large overworld areas using parkour abilities, stopping to collect information, completing points of interest and fighting enemies.
Square Enix
Athia has been blighted by something Frey dubs the Break, and its remaining residents are camped out in one central city. The plot quickly establishes four evil “Tantas” for Frey to go up against, each with their own powers and motives, and we fought through to a climactic battle with one such baddie. Before that, though, we had to wade through a hefty heaping of honestly tiresome exposition and story material, all of it sadly pretty predictable and standard fare at best.
Square Enix
Frey herself is animatedly performed by Ella Balinska but the script she’s been handed is a weird one – largely because she swears every other line in what’s presumably an attempt at real-life vernacular.
It comes off as a little too much, though.
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Give them the run-around
The areas you get to run around in Forspoken start off medium-sized but quickly become massive, full of small side activities and optional extras, most of which we didn’t have time to explore.
Square Enix
Moving around these areas is pretty fun off the bat with Frey’s Flow move letting her sprint at high speed. Honestly, though, the stamina mechanic here proved a drag with little upside, forcing us to occasionally stop when we’d rather not.
You’ll also spot glowing blue lights around the map that each award a Mana point to spend on upgrading your spells – think Crackdown’s ability orbs and you’re in the right ballpark. This is a fun way to motivate exploration and has nice tangible benefits, so works excellently.
Square Enix
As you move into combat with enemies, things are a bit of a mixed bag. Using Frey’s brown earth magic we had access to projectiles that fired more quickly or slowly depending on if we wanted to charge them up, and this made Forspoken almost a highly-mobile third-person shooter.
It didn’t excel at this, though, with weird imprecise aiming and spongy movement, and while other magic trees might solve this issue, the early powers are still a little lacklustre. The game also threw huge numbers of enemies wielding shields at us past a certain point, something that just wasn’t very fun to fight against – we found one spell that worked well to counter them and basically just mainlined it for two hours.
Square Enix
The core of Forspoken’s combat system could have some great stuff to offer up, but at the moment it feels a little unpolished, although only having one part of its skill tree to explore was an obvious exculpatory factor. One chapter we played also opened with an extended sequence in the last human city in Athia, and the side quests it offered up were frankly boring – something we quickly escaped to get back into the open world for more fun goings-on.
A visual feast?
Forspoken will launch as a PS5 exclusive, so you’d hope that it can take its place on the forefront of the cutting edge graphically.
Square Enix
From what we played, it certainly has potential – loading times were infrequent and really brief, and the world itself is sprawling and looks great.
That said, it’s also a little bit empty – while there are enemies and small bases to clear, detail is lacking as you move overground. Terrain and geometry are complex and impressive, to be clear, but it doesn’t feel hugely authored for the most part. We saw a forested area, a large arid desert pocked with greenery, and finally a deep-red volcanic landscape, although each was marked by otherworldly rock formations tearing them apart.
Square Enix
The variety is ok between zones, but each was very samey while you were in it – this is a hard issue to convey, but it makes us worried about whether Forspoken will have enough invention to keep these areas interesting.
What we can say is unequivocally great is the explosion of effects that accompanies most battles, with particles flying everywhere – we can only assume more powers will mean even more chaos on this front, and it all looks excellent. Still, Forspoken overall has a bit of a generic look and feel to it, and only a full play-through will confirm whether this is something it’ll overcome in its full course. We also were able to change the game from a 30FPS quality mode into a 60FPS performance option – while we can’t comment on resolution targets, this extra smoothness felt essential given the speed of Forspoken’s combat, and made a big difference to how it felt to play.
To recap
Forspoken feels like an interesting blend of gameplay elements from Square Enix projects past and present, but we’re not certain it all comes together.
With more magic to use in the final game, though, variety could be the solution.
Writing by Max Freeman-Mills.
Editing by Verity Burns.
