Honestly? This is quite a sweet game! I actually kinda like the story, although it's told a little weirdly - almost television-esque? I do quite like protagonists that are at odds with the story itself, and I get quite a lot of that content here, so that's nice. Ella Balinska's performance is really good, too. Yes, some lines are a little too "quippy", a little bit weird sounding but overall I found the dialogue to be quite fun? And it's also quite understandable that two characters that do not wanna be where they are would talk to each other like that. So yea, I guess I like Forspoken's story! The combat also has enough oomph and glitter and sparkles and very dramatic looking animations that I found it entertaining - and very pleasing to look at. The open world is very under-utilized but works nice enough as a background for stylishly running to your next target. This whole thing feels to me like an AA-effort blown up into a overproduced full-front system-seller AAA-"experience", where the worst parts come from that conversion process. But overall... I think this is nice enough. Never in a million years worth $80 tho!

The game made it super hard on itself by releasing a demo that gave people a very bad impression on it and then proceeding to make it worse by not handing out review codes to several media outlets ...

The game itself isn't terrible. The main issue comes from hiding many of it's mechanics from the player until they reach a certain point in the story. Once you realize that there's so much more to come in terms of skills and mechanics it gets quite motivating to continue. However, aside from the pretty fun combat and movement it still leaves lot to be desired.

The story is as basic as it gets, the banter isn't great and the game just doesn't offer any interesting characters to speak of. The open world stuff also is just super bland and I could not find interesting quest for the life of me.

If you concentrate on the story, only do a bit of open world fluff on the side and just play it as a wizard fighting simulator ... it can be quite entertaining. The effects are pretty stunning and the moveset is impressively large. The main story also has some cool setpieces to offer.

Do not play this if you're a completionist or "require" a good story to enjoy a game. It's not terrible, I'd say it's servicable, but it won't carry the experience at all.

Let me set this review out by making clear I mainly rented Forspoken to make a joke about playing "the Wizard Game". My expectations from what I had seen, mainly videos of cringe dialogue on Twitter, were not especially high. This was not helped by the first half hour of the game basically being a walking simulator. And yes, the dialogue is indeed consistently cringe throughout the game, though Frey's VA Ella Balinska really gives her all and there are some poignant scenes throughout.

However, while the game does make some truly baffling choices, the simple fact is that the gameplay is very good. While Frey's movepool is initially rather shallow, it expands with each major story boss, introducing layers of increasingly fun spell loadouts. All of the different styles of magic bring their own playstyle and quirks beyond their element, such as a focus on close-range combat, or detonating spell primers. This prevents the feeling of that expanding movepool from feeling like you're just getting the next option of a game of elemental rock-paper-scissors. Combat is not excessively challenging on Normal mode, but is difficult to master and I imagine certain encounters would be a nightmare on higher difficulties for those who want that.

On a lot of fronts it is standard open-world fare, with traversal options also unfolding over the course of the game and various side-quests and rewards for exploration. A minor aspect I really appreciate is that waypoints on your minimap are explicit about the reward you'll receive for completion, it's refreshingly honest.

I must also say I've found the critique that the game is too short to be not entirely unfounded but certainly exaggerated. I beat the final boss with 23 hours logged, doing some side-quests but only ones which I thought 'on the way' to my next main goal, and I have post game to come.

In fact, I came in with a score of 3.5 stars but my heart lies somewhere between there and a 4 really. But this is much better than its reception would suggest and is worth a look.