There''s plenty of stuff Forspoken has in common with its predecessor, with the development team behind Square Enix''s big-budget action RPG having been assembled from those who''d worked on Final Fantasy 15 - a game that evolved into the norm, but which eventually got hooked and entertaining.
I''ve had a soft spot for Final Fantasy 15 ever since it was released, its diversity of character and sense of adventure atoning for some of its lumpiness, and despite a rough journey in recent weeks following the widely-derided trailer, I''m now developing a soft spot for Forspoken. After spending just over an hour flying around the fantasy area of Avaolet, there''s that same free-wheeling sense of adventure that wreak havoc on Final Fantasy 15, backed up by
Forspoken is the second game built upon the Luminous Engine to help Final Fantasy 15 explore the vast scale of the world, with the same predicament for a spectacular wide-open vista. Perhaps the greatest distraction was the photo mode I kept using, capturing our hero Freya in the fantasy landscape. If you want to see a good RPG, then Forspoken appears to deliver.
"We didn''t intend to make it in any way like Final Fantasy 15," said the forespoken co-director. "We thought okay, we''re doing a new IP, we''re doing a whole new game here. We wanted to do things that have never been done before, and we had that great opportunity so we immediately put it together and popped into motion. So yeah, this does feel a little bit like Final Fantasy 15. In some ways
With the simple press of a button, Frey approaches the terrain and reveals unusual, graceful arcs, making it easier to navigate, despite the fact that it''s supervised by a dense skill-tree, bringing new possibilities to the game. In turn, your constantly-expanding moveset opens up more possibilities when it comes to combat.
When it comes to combat, Forspoken is frighteningly broad, utilizing 100 abilities to combine and match, a fact that offers plenty of variety when it comes to building builds. There are ranged attacks that kick from Frey''s palms, or brutal melee attacks that can be charged, while you can also summon armies of fiery soldiers to fight by your side, or cast a dancing ring of fire that may calm an adversary on the spot so you can whittle down their health in no time.
Despite the amount of complexity on offer, it is a lot, and a significant part of my time with the Forspoken demos was spent browsing menus and tinkering with options. There''s a wide selection of abilities, with combat being a case of juggling buffs and debuffs while exploiting enemy''s weaknesses (and despite the fact that it effectively boils down to picking between different flavours of purple ranged magic and red melee magic).
"I believe that the main defining element of the battle system is the fact that you''ve got this incredible variety of different magic spells that you can use," Terada says. "It was very well designed before the development and was throughout the whole development of the battle system. I think those two factors come together to make it a unique system, mainly in terms of that variation that was very important."
Forspoken''s game, which features both the depth and the breadth of compat options, is mediocre when it comes to impact, with a floatiness and a slight lack of feedback with the combat as it stands, something that it could hopefully be improved in the coming months that it has delayed, however. There''s a promise here, of a triple-A game that has got the sense of pride to support it.
