An honest neutral review of Forspoken
I was able to buy this game on a recent sale on my PS5. Finally got time to try this and oh boy! I did enjoy it honestly. I really don’t get the hate this game is getting without them having the thought of playing this. This actually got a lot of negative comments and bombarded with harsh reviews. But for me, they are wrong.
Having to play and beat the game for roughly 25 hours, I can say that this game is not perfect. Yes it has flaws, it has some cringe moments and weird dialogue conversations. I get that. But this game also shines in some aspects if you’ll look deeply into it.
I am reviewing this game from my POV as an adult gamer who actually has an ADHD that loves open world games. With that being said, the Traversing mechanic is wonderful! Doing Magic Parkour all over Athia is something I could enjoy for dozens of hours. Exploration is fun for me. It keeps me going to place to one another. Though I just don’t like the repetitive dialogues between Cuff and Frey during the open world. Frey, the protagonist is a complicated one. She is not the typical protagonist who sees the world as a fairy tale and wants to rank to the top. She is selfish, arrogant and full of air (at first) . But was able to redeem her character as she learned the truth. That alone is a good character progression for me. I don’t want to mention anything that spoils the story.
Another thing I liked about this game is the gameplay, the skillsets. You will have different skillset from Tantas, each has unique features and abilities depending on your playthrough. It is really fun for me. This is something you can’t see often in an open world game. You have plenty of abilities to choose from and combine with other abilities as well.
The controls on the other hand has its learning curve. It is a challenge having to press certain buttons to change skills to another.
The graphics on PS5 is astonishing. The world of Athia is indeed a new world for me. I opted playing in performance mode which gives me a maximum framerate. Ray Tracing and Quality mode is quite good but has a lot of frame drops during certain battles. Even the performance mode has is frame drops as well. The optimization is not that great in this aspect.
The story and lore of forspoken is quite interesting too. Just give yourself a few hours to overcome some cringe dialogue. In the middle portion upto the end game, everything has its own turns. A good plot and ending.
This is not a perfect game but a good start for the developers to learn from the reviews. Forspoken has a lot of potentials. I was hoping fans stop the hate when games flop. I am a developer too myself so I know the feeling of having to spend most of time coding and trying to fix everything.
I am glad I gave this game a chance. This will be part of my uniquely enjoyed games of all time.
