Forspoken

Forspoken’s flashy combat and parkour can be fun, but they aren’t enough to make its cliche story and barebones open world very interesting to explore.

Forspoken is visually stimulating and a musical delight, but boring combat, poor characterization, and loose movement mechanics make for a mediocre experience.

Forspoken takes it time to get over a wobbly start, but there's something worthwhile here amongst the noise.

Forspoken occasionally has small sparks of greatness, but then quickly douses itself in fear of ever being anything other than an upsettingly safe open-world RPG.

Forspoken’s opening hours are by far its worst. It took me 16 hours to complete the game, taking in a fair bit of the side offerings in this open-world action RPG, being careful not to sprint too quickly toward the game’s conclusion, though the temptation was there.

"Barring a few rare setpieces, Forspoken seems to prefer to tell rather than show"

Forspoken's story and combat fail to reach the heights of its movement and exploration, but thankfully those two latter elements make up most of the experience.

This could have been a great fish-out-of-water experience, but it's let down by patronising explanations and clunky gameplay.

“Forspoken” doesn’t do anything new for the open-world genre of games, but it does offer just enough to distinguish itself, mostly thanks to Frey and her magic spells, and a story that’s able to stick the landing.

Squeenix's epic-ish isekai game has cool magical combat, but it's far too big for its own good, and that scale leaves it feeling empty and disappointing.