F.I.S.T Forged In Shadow Torch

[Maf]

Despite a cool sounding name, a 80% on Metacritic and a really cool song on the PS5 Home Screen I’m not enjoying this game as much as I want too. 
 

The set up is kind of terrible. It’s a animal city that has been subjugated by robots/corporations called the Legion and now the city resembles something between Gotham and Midgar. Your character is Ray who is a reluctant, veteran rabbit who doesn’t want to help fight the Legion but his freedom fighter friend gets kidnapped so immediately you’re jumping around and punching shit with your FIST. Which is a mechanical backpack with a giant FIST on it. 
 

You might think well that doesn’t sound too bad. But the characters refer to the animal citizens as Furtizens and it makes you go oh who the fuck wrote that fire that person and never let anyone talk in this game.

 

It’s a 2D Metroidvania which has exploration and secrets but is more balanced towards it’s melee combat than anything else. The combat is quite decent. It starts with a light attack, heavy attack, grab and dash. Straight away it feels quite natural and it didn’t take long to unlock a couple of skills and upgrades so I was air dashing, air dodging, grabbing fools, doing whirlwind strikes, uppercuts and super punches. It’s quite good. I like it. The problem is despite multiple weapons and a huge skill tree the standard heavy attack stun locks pretty much everybody bar bosses to death. And even when I don’t use that, I find I don’t need anything else this game offers. It’s like they have this expansive combat set and you just use the first 3 moves and that’ll do. 
 

The exploration side is worse. The movement is good, and the map Ok. But the secrets aren’t rewarding. You can find the heart piece equivalent and the like but most of the time it’s a collectible or money. Things that aren’t helpful (I mean money would be helpful to buy moves with but like I say I don’t feel like I need any more moves right now)

 

The thing I dislike the most about the game is the look. It’s the most Unreal Engine looking thing I’ve since the X360. It’s grey, brown, black, and beige in this run down, really boring looking city and factory (the two places I’ve been so far) and I dunno what’s up with the game but it looks like it’s running at 720p. Apparently the game is running at 4K but the image is so soft and smudgy that between the Unreal look, the colours, and the general darkness of the game it’s not fun to look at. Thankfully the environments aren’t too dense or complex so the game is easily visible. But I don’t think it looks very good at all.

 

Overall I like it and will continue to play it. It’s decent enough. But somewhere along the line I got the impression this game was really cool. Which is not where I’m at. 
 

Not to say it, not to be that guy, but also coming out in a year that has Metroid Dread in it? Ouch. 

[mfnick]

I’ve finally played through this. I remember immediately being all over it when it was first revealed, bought it on PS4 then got distracted and never played it. Anyway it’s on GP now which reminded me it existed so used that as an excuse to play through it. On the Xbox. Where I didn’t even pay for it. Yea… 

 

Anyways, it’s ok. Basically everything Maf says holds true. Except I think it actually looks ok - maybe the XSX is doing some upscaling or something. I think it looks decent to be fair but I definitely agree with regards to the colour palette, it’s very dark and brown. 
 

The story is complete shit. And the term ‘Furtizens’ actually angers me. 
 

The combat and platforming is pretty decent. With some of the bosses actually being really fun and satisfying to fight against. 
 

The Metroid part of it is basically non existent. It’s more of a linear platform/brawler with a metroid map. There’s basically no reason to return to previous areas. But this isn’t a negative really, just an observation. 
 

There’s way too many fucking under water sections though which go on way to long and are just shit. 
 

It’s decent enough though. I had fun. It’s a good gamepass game if you’re curious but I  wouldn’t actually recommend it. 
 

6/10

[Maryokutai]

Funnily enough I just started this today. I have ten days on my Gamepass subscription to go and thought this might be doable in that timeframe.

 

It does leave a relatively good early impression. Controls are tight, it looks good enough, if a tad generic, combat has a good amount of weight and feedback to it. I already noticed that rewards for exploration don't seem too hot after discovering a well-hidden ... poster. But if it turns out to be a bit more linear anyway then I suppose this won't be too much of an issue.

 

The dialogue is indeed pretty bad though. It's weird how they're constantly repeating names, sometimes even those of the person they are speaking to, instead of switching to pronouns. I don't know if they don't care too much about writing or if there's no budget for good translations, but every Chinese game I've played so far had almost insufferable dialogue. Like a crossover between FFXIII and Tales of Arise done through Google Translate.