Forspoken (Demo)

[one-armed dwarf]

Forspoken demo, put a few hours into it and beat the boss on normal mode. It has some neat ideas, and I think it is sorta like an air dashy Dragon's Dogma. However the luminous engine (FFXV engine) is still such a dog when it comes to combat. Or maybe not the engine, whatever framework it is the FFXV people build their combat off.

 

My big problem with it and also XV is the way melee attacks are contextual based off proximity and your character sort of magnetises to enemies. The automatic feel is still just absolutely terrible. On the other hand, Forspoken has a really cool magic system which has some interesting layers to it. 

 

Here's the boss I beat up.

 

 

Here I slogged for an eternity killing these dumb gators. 

 

The visuals of this game are not well suited for a game like this. The particle effects make it very noisy to look at. The resolution is not high enough and the framerate is not high enough. This kind of game needs 4k 60 native, it has this weird reconstruction stuff going on that doesn't work well with the particles maybe. It just doesn't run well enough in this build for the combat to feel good. Hopefully at release it is better.

 

That said, I'm still interested in this game. Even if it ends up a 6/10 on release it's rare you get open world games with varied combat. Especially magic combat, which is usually just about keeping away. When you chain the spells together and mix in the range attacks and distance closers it can be pretty cool looking

 

edit I played some more later, I actually had a really good time this time. I'm more confident in the game now, maybe it can be a 6.5 lol

 

 

 

I think the general idea in combat is your r2 spam melee moves are your main damage moves, and your cooldowns set up safe opportunities to spam them. Other than that you need to hang back a bit and spam the 'gun' attack.

 

The radial wheel is not very clean to use, I wish they had a better shortcut mapping system. But I think it works well enough, especially if you set it to pause on opening the wheel and play it like FFVII Remake's wait mode a bit

[one-armed dwarf]

Put a good bit more into the demo, beat this secret boss. Tried to do it on hard mode but too damage spongey, probably need upgrades. So did it on normal, almost did no damage but no dice.

 

(just putting vid in spoiler to make page easier to use)

 

Spoiler

 

 

Generally speaking, this game is a Ubisoft style checklist game. Or more appropriately Crackdown. You just wander around collecting skill points and upgrades and do procedurally generated filler missions. Sometimes you get unique voice lines, but that's the idea. It's another open world game about hoovering a map up and doing homework. However unlike Ubi and Crackdown the combat is actually really fun here. So even tho the loop is pretty repetitive and just about fighting things I don't really mind it cause it feels like the action is pretty well put together

 

 

The combat is kinda like a cross between FFXV, Kingdom Hearts and bizarrely Remedy's Control. Some of the powers have some interesting properties, like you have a ranged attack which generates a shield in front of you (like control). Also similar to Control is that the game can be kinda hard to pick up at first, and has major visibility issues. But manages to get fun once you figure it out, which won't happen right away

(Random quest fight)

Spoiler

 

 

Between Bayonetta 3 and this there's lots of games about fighting with cool mage powers now. Honestly more excited for this than FFXVI, tho I'm expecting to turn around on that one once they do a similar demo.