There has been a lot of talk about Forspoken in recent months, and between delays and postponements (and an unconvincing demo) we have finally arrived at the moment of the review
They are The prophesiedtitle of Luminous Productionsthere would be a lot to say and that’s what we will do in this review. After some postponements, a demo was distributed close to the release which did not fully convince gamers, and the software house, together with Square Enix, made sure to confirm that the view was an old build. Have all the critical issues that were highlighted in that famous demo really been resolved? If you want to know, all you have to do is continue reading our review of The prophesiedof which we have already anticipated something in our article.
A little history doesn’t hurt – Forspoken review
We are mostly close to our day, and poor Frey Holland comes out for what seems to be the umpteenth time from a Court of Justice. Frey is a girl who lives in that very complicated New York, a city that offers some people the opportunity to cross the gates of success, while others do not offer many opportunities for redemption. Frey in fact belongs to the second category, an orphaned girl who lives on her wits like theft or something else.
But New York is not without its surprisesand for what appears to be a fortuitous event comes into contact with Cuffa golden bracelet that is anything but harmless, and this will send her into a portal that will lead her to the imaginary world of Athia. A world in full chaos, as a plague that is called simply Ruin (or Corruption) is spreading and destroying all living forms present in it. Needless to say, Frey Holland will be remembered as a very lucky girl.
Athia is a world ruled by four called “matriarchs”. Tanthawho are concerned with the well-being and security of the people located in their “region” to which they belong. Matriarchs who, due to the Ruin, are in the throes of madness and they are getting brutal against their own people. And Frey (who at times reminded us aesthetically Bonnie Bennett Of The Vampire Diaries) will find himself right in the middle of the disaster looking for an alternative to be able to return to his own world. Obviously we are taught that this will not be easy for her at all.
In fact, she will find herself, sometimes in spite of herself and reluctantly, to help the inhabitants of Athia, supported by the talking bracelet Cuff which will point out to our protagonist that she will be able to use some magical arts, which can be used to face the dangers of the world of Athia and thus save the lives of its inhabitants.
Let’s go live – Forspoken Review
The plot is clearly inspired by opera isekaithose works that include stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandof a human being who for some reason ends up trapped in another world. Nothing new on this front it seems, however, the game featuring open world mechanics and magical weapon combat, provides the gamer with that extra edge to attract his attention. But let’s proceed in order.
Forspoken immediately sets us two of the most important choices that a gamer must make, that of the choice of difficulty, and the choice of video quality. In the first hypothesis we will have 4 difficulty levelswe could focus on the story, prioritize exploration, dedicate ourselves to battles, or choose the default setting which will be the most balanced.
One of the first critical issues of the title by Luminous Productions is inherent in the choice of video settingsyou will be able to choose whether to prioritize the graphics qualitychoose to use the ray tracingor give the performance priority thus favoring the frame rate. In the first two settings we will have decidedly remarkable graphics, but we will have to deal with a frame rate that will make the game annoying to the eyes, especially in the most agitated battle phases.
It will then it is mandatory to opt for the priority of servicesthus enjoying a more stable and pleasant frame rate, which is still not spared from drastic drops in the most hectic battle phases and with a high presence of luminous particle effects. In short, even enduring a much inferior and less pleasant graphic design, the video game is equally afflicted by more or less marked drops in frame rate.
Things don’t improve much when it comes to animations of the characters or NPCs on the map. And we’re not just talking about those regarding some movements, but even in the “simple” facial animations, one sometimes gets the feeling that it was necessary to pay more attention and attention to detail. And not only in the animations of the various characters will we find problems that will make us turn up our mouths, but also in the settings that will be around us.
If as far as Athia is concerned, the world is re-proposed with a fairly pleasant and detailed graphic care (although it will mostly feature large open fields), the same cannot be said of the city of New York (which we would like to clarify we will visit very few times in the adventure) whose graphic quality seems to come from two generations ago. There is therefore an abysmal detachment between what we will see in Athia, and what we will instead see in the city of New York, speaking in terms of graphic quality.
Even the overall artistic quality gives that impression of being “patchy”as we will be amazed by some visual glimpses, while we will be amazed by the meager quality of some, first of all the Pilgrim refuges represented by the exact same model copied and pasted in several points of the map. In fact, the refuge will always be the same, in every small detail, even the folds of the bed sheets will be in exactly the same position in every single refuge, even if they are kilometers away from each other.
A Closer Look – Forspoken Review
Continuing our review of The prophesied an open parenthesis on everything that revolves around the title cannot be missing, e even if things are not disastrous perhaps we would have expected something more. Trying to follow a well-defined order we must start by talking about the stealth phases, because the game will offer some of them, but they will be guided and will last a handful of minutes. And this is where we will notice the first shortcomings of Forspokento start if we are noticed the game will stop without showing any action of the guards or any cutscene, all will end with a guard who will turn towards us and take two steps.
The second criticality that we will seeand this will be doubly linked to the “fantastic longevity of the title of over 20 hours”, is that the game will start making us move from one point to another (mostly a few hundred meters) subsequently showing a short cutscene, and then make us move a few more steps and repeat another cutscene. This is exactly where a terrible suspicion arose: will not be that the game will continue at this rate? Showing us cutscenes thrown in the middle of moments in which we will only have to move a few hundred meters just to lengthen the broth?
Unfortunately that’s exactly how it isunder review by The prophesied we realized that the much acclaimed “20+ hours of gameplay for the main story alone” is achieved in this way, continuing to present the gamer with continuous cutscenes, even useless and which often break the pace of the game unnecessarilyin itself already slow if it weren’t for those few combat phases that it will be possible to face by traveling around the world of Athia. Combat phases that most of the time will be an end in themselves and that we could easily bypass with our “parkour run” (except obviously the boss fights or some in which we would have to kill the enemies in front of us to continue the game) .
The narrative itself is slow and sometimes has useless dialogue, ends in themselves and put there only to lengthen the time on the gamer’s clock by a few minutes and get it to the phantom 20 hours of play. Note that in the final stages not only there seems to have been a cut in game content (as if part of the adventure had been cut away from the final product), but there is also an absurd walk (which can cover even an hour or more of gameplay) where we will simply have to walk to get to interact with a memory and start a cutscene. All repeated at least a dozen times or so, while we should also collect sources of mana randomly placed around us (in groups of 20, one at a time of course).
A Variety of Things to Do – Forspoken Review
Insert all those memories, and reveal the story of Frey Holland in those fragmented cutscenes, it seemed to us yet another attempt to lengthen the brothas it would have been more sensible to reveal the story of the protagonist to us in the continuation of the game, instead of boring gamers with continuous walks and repeated final cutscenes that there was no need at all.
We only have two more coins left to flip up, one is the one about the open world structure, and the other is the one about the gameplay, and starting dall’open world, the demo’s predictions were also partially accurate. In the demo the feeling everyone got was that of a mostly world bare and emptylacking a real consistency of enemies worthy of putting Frey in difficulty, and lacking a feeling of imminent threat to the gamer.
It is exactly like this, even if we admit that in the open word there are multiple secondary activities to be completed, e the Sealed Mazes seemed very interesting and fun to play through. These are some dungeons of limited size and composed of some rooms in which to defeat enemies, before reaching a room with a boss to defeat to obtain equipment for our protagonist.
Frey Holland in his raids around the world of Athia will in fact be able to equip a cloak, a pendante paint her nails to enhance her magical powers. In The prophesied in fact there are mechanics, albeit minimal and not essential for the sole purpose of completing the main story, crafting and looting. In fact, it will be advisable to also pay an eye to the equipment that we are going to wear, and which will provide us with bonuses to health or defense for example.
Frey’s magical arts themselves will be many and varied, all of which will have a unique effect on the enemy and will be composed of the four natural elements, water, fire, earth, and lightning. Also enemies will present their weaknesses and resistances, for example some may be immune to water element magic and extremely vulnerable to fire element. It will therefore be necessary, by pressing the respective keys placed on the joypad, to choose the appropriate spells, which it will also be possible to chain together to inflict damage on enemies…