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I completed the story of Forspoken. It's probably the most fun I've had with a console game in seven or eight years. Thoughts:
1) The final boss is v. hard. I thought I was a bit overprepared but I still struggled.
2) The third act of the story kind of rockets past very quickly. It's not that it's rushed so much that you come to realise you're further through the plot than you thought you were. This leads to a sense that the game is kind of running away from you a bit.
3) There's a twist in the story that I wasn't at all sure worked, but I think it just about does. It's set up pretty well, and there's a decent red herring a little way before it that's enough to have you doubting what's really going on. But what it does do is take away one particular gameplay mechanic that's very useful until you kill the final boss, and although I can't see an obvious solution to that, it does seem a bit unfair.
4) Supporting characters have bad English accents. Dick Van Dyke bad. Thankfully, all the main characters are fine.
5) Frey and Cuff spend a lot of time ripping the piss out of fantasy tropes and video games in general and I love it. Frey is quick to point out that NPCs only talk to you when they want something. The game has an awkward "Yankee in King Arthur's court" thing going on that's quite charming. In particular, townspeople remain salty towards Frey even after she saves the world. There's one guy who names something in honour of her precisely because he knows she'll hate that. You can buy cat treats at this one shop and when you buy everything in the shop you expect some kind of acknowledgement but instead the seller just implies you're a crazy cat lady.
6) It's a cat lover's game. There are normal cats and magical cats. You can pet them all. The magical ones have outrageous backstories.
7) Combat is great; challenging but fair, and satisfyingly solid. You have to develop different tactics for different baddies and keep an eye out for their big attacks because they are usually quick and devastating. Early on you encounter slow zombies and then one of them will suddenly become a FAST ZOMBIE. And not just fast for a few seconds, no, when a baddie is charging at you they KEEP CHARGING.
8) There's a great idea whereby you are encouraged to use all of the different moves and practise your skills. This avoids a problem with a lot of modern games that cram in a huge amount of combat styles but you can get by with just a couple.
9) I'm still not sold on the lock-on mechanism which feels hit and miss. It's pretty much my only complaint about the combat though. Well, the d-pad is a bit sensitive so sometimes when you push down to use a health potion you accidentally push left or right also and switch magic styles. But other than that it's good.
10) The game is surprisingly light on side quests. There are some but most peripheral material is saved for stuff you encounter out in the field. There are different types of side levels including dungeon crawlers and timed challenges. It all plays fluid and fair. For example, you're allowed to leave the dungeons at any time and keep what you got rather than having to clear out the whole thing in one go (shades of Pikmin 2's underground lairs). You can level up your magic during a timed challenge even if you fail the challenge.
11) The environments vary in style, but not so much as to require vastly different traversal techniques. Whereas some open-world games tend to clump points of interest together between vast expanses of Bumfuck, this game seems to be entirely a patchwork quilt made from stitched-together Bumfuck. You will spend most of the time wondering where they hell you are, how you got there and where to go next. On the plus side, spreading points of interest out homogenously means you're never more than a minute's sprint from something to do. On the downside, it takes a lot longer to develop a familiarity with the regions. On balance I prefer this to Final Fantasy XV's more curated world.
12) I get old-school Tomb Raider vibes for the times where you're stood at the bottom of sheer cliff knowing you have to climb it and unsure how to do it. Contrast with God of War where there's only ever one way up and it's fucking signposted. This is not the first time I point out how much I hate the Uncharted influence of hand-holding traversal and long for a deeper challenge. Forspoken doesn't quite hit the bullseye on that but it's the closest for a very long time. Can it please be the first of a generation of such games.
13) Iwannagoplayitsomemore
1) The final boss is v. hard. I thought I was a bit overprepared but I still struggled.
2) The third act of the story kind of rockets past very quickly. It's not that it's rushed so much that you come to realise you're further through the plot than you thought you were. This leads to a sense that the game is kind of running away from you a bit.
3) There's a twist in the story that I wasn't at all sure worked, but I think it just about does. It's set up pretty well, and there's a decent red herring a little way before it that's enough to have you doubting what's really going on. But what it does do is take away one particular gameplay mechanic that's very useful until you kill the final boss, and although I can't see an obvious solution to that, it does seem a bit unfair.
4) Supporting characters have bad English accents. Dick Van Dyke bad. Thankfully, all the main characters are fine.
5) Frey and Cuff spend a lot of time ripping the piss out of fantasy tropes and video games in general and I love it. Frey is quick to point out that NPCs only talk to you when they want something. The game has an awkward "Yankee in King Arthur's court" thing going on that's quite charming. In particular, townspeople remain salty towards Frey even after she saves the world. There's one guy who names something in honour of her precisely because he knows she'll hate that. You can buy cat treats at this one shop and when you buy everything in the shop you expect some kind of acknowledgement but instead the seller just implies you're a crazy cat lady.
6) It's a cat lover's game. There are normal cats and magical cats. You can pet them all. The magical ones have outrageous backstories.
7) Combat is great; challenging but fair, and satisfyingly solid. You have to develop different tactics for different baddies and keep an eye out for their big attacks because they are usually quick and devastating. Early on you encounter slow zombies and then one of them will suddenly become a FAST ZOMBIE. And not just fast for a few seconds, no, when a baddie is charging at you they KEEP CHARGING.
8) There's a great idea whereby you are encouraged to use all of the different moves and practise your skills. This avoids a problem with a lot of modern games that cram in a huge amount of combat styles but you can get by with just a couple.
9) I'm still not sold on the lock-on mechanism which feels hit and miss. It's pretty much my only complaint about the combat though. Well, the d-pad is a bit sensitive so sometimes when you push down to use a health potion you accidentally push left or right also and switch magic styles. But other than that it's good.
10) The game is surprisingly light on side quests. There are some but most peripheral material is saved for stuff you encounter out in the field. There are different types of side levels including dungeon crawlers and timed challenges. It all plays fluid and fair. For example, you're allowed to leave the dungeons at any time and keep what you got rather than having to clear out the whole thing in one go (shades of Pikmin 2's underground lairs). You can level up your magic during a timed challenge even if you fail the challenge.
11) The environments vary in style, but not so much as to require vastly different traversal techniques. Whereas some open-world games tend to clump points of interest together between vast expanses of Bumfuck, this game seems to be entirely a patchwork quilt made from stitched-together Bumfuck. You will spend most of the time wondering where they hell you are, how you got there and where to go next. On the plus side, spreading points of interest out homogenously means you're never more than a minute's sprint from something to do. On the downside, it takes a lot longer to develop a familiarity with the regions. On balance I prefer this to Final Fantasy XV's more curated world.
12) I get old-school Tomb Raider vibes for the times where you're stood at the bottom of sheer cliff knowing you have to climb it and unsure how to do it. Contrast with God of War where there's only ever one way up and it's fucking signposted. This is not the first time I point out how much I hate the Uncharted influence of hand-holding traversal and long for a deeper challenge. Forspoken doesn't quite hit the bullseye on that but it's the closest for a very long time. Can it please be the first of a generation of such games.
13) Iwannagoplayitsomemore
