I can understand the hatred for this one, but also really struggle to see how this game has gotten so much worse reviews and heapings of hate despite just being an okay-ish open-world game.
Forspoken is a pretty good game, when it feels like being a good game. I think the people who did the storyboarding, setting the lore for the universe, and who did the enemy and character designs should absolutely get a raise, promotion, or whatever you can give them. I've seen a lot of people call this game "bland" or "boring" in design, but when you see the half-dog-zombie monsters, crystallized orcs, and lavish outfits for the royalty and upper-class members of this game, I think it's a lot harder to call Forspoken "boring."
In reality, this game has a good amount of good, settled in with a good amount of bad. It's a game I don't think I can dissect too much outside of listing what I liked and what I didn't.
For what I liked? To start, the gameplay and traversal were pretty fun. I don't think there's a lot of great open-world games that want you to move at the speed of light, dodging through rocks, mountains, craters, and valleys, but Forspoken is totally okay with you skipping around its world as you check off objectives and quests (more on this later). It's fun to feel so free, and I think it gave me a lot of good memories with something like Spider-Man or Infamous coming to mind. It's not just a generic horseback or trodding through the world game, it wants you to rush through it and lessen the limitations you might feel in other open-world games.
On the gameplay side, it's a mostly good game with a few modifications that would have helped it be better. I think the game has overall good gameplay, and most importantly, it's unique. It's a good mix of peppering in spells, assists, and ending your attack with a crushing ultimate attack. It doesn't really go beyond this in any tree - one of my gripes - but it does a good job being this magical fusion of DMC and generic guard-breaking, enemy weakness spamming you'd see in a Ubisoft game.
I'm also generally favorable on the way this game handles upgrades - it's fun and again reminescent of something like Infamous when you're picking up the blue mana pools around the world. These are used to purchase new spells and enhance your abilities, and on top of this, you're able to change challenges at certain markers in the open world to enhance that specific ability better with a challenge, also permanently making Frey stronger. This is one of the best ways I've seen a game do this, outside of some challenges being highly situational and hard to accomplish. There really shouldn't have been a limit of three of these you can obtain at one time (it's three, and sometimes you can be in a story mission, unable to change these from a menu or anywhere else until you are back at at a safehouse).
Getting more into the meh or bad parts of this game, there's really no shortage on where to go. On the world design, I'm sort of in the middle. The strange obelisks, the gothic architecture of certain castles and each bosses domain? Very, very good. On the other side? Yeah, there are a lot of areas in this game that are fields and plains. Fields, and more plains. Did I mention they had fields and plains with some enemies in a generic looking field of rubble from a town? Forspoken does a great job on the main path of the game, but veering off to the side can really ruin the magic of the game and put you in sort of that open-world nausea so many of us face when being bored while playing these games.
The story for the game, again, is mixed. I think the game was written pretty well to start, but once you reach the sort of "isekai" moment for Frey...yeah, we're talking YA fiction levels of dialogue. Generic swearing, Marvel-isms, and just a lot of tell-not-showing. It's something that can sometimes, on occasion, actually land well. Frey's voice-actor does a pretty good job of selling the frustration and anger of being trapped in this other world, but the dialogue choices are pretty often mediocre and not what even a normal person would say in a lot of these scenarios.
Along with that, there is a lot of talking in the open-world segment, but I don't find it any more infurating most JRPGs are with repeated voice lines after combat or while exploring dungeons in games of their own. I kinda hate to see people bring that up and go to see something like Xenoblade or Persona or even games Square Enix has made in their favorites. It's repetitive and annoying but no more annoying than most games that have only thirty to fifty voice lines per character.
I think if there's anything to rag on this game for, it's for the massive lack of side content, fun minigames, or really anything to do other than progress the story. There are fun boss-fights and dungeons to explore, but for one of those, there are three "visit an empty town and kill some enemies". Or even better, sit at a statue while we raise your health or defense by +1. Really nothing engaging to see while you are progressing the story. The townspeople missions are all horrifically bland fetch-quests as well, most of them not even requiring that you leave town, but instead running chores for the townspeople as they spout off about how much they hate you (Frey is pretty much hated for 2/3rds of this game by most of the town). This game really has some of the most lackluster side content that will be making this platinum on PSN much more frustrating than if it just had the dungeons, difficult bosses, and more fun challenge runs left in as side content.
Overall, I think this is a good open world game as a bargain bin game. I got this for $20 and have no regrets in beating it or playing through it, unlike if I had maybe bought this for $70 at launch.
Forspoken is a pretty good game, when it feels like being a good game. I think the people who did the storyboarding, setting the lore for the universe, and who did the enemy and character designs should absolutely get a raise, promotion, or whatever you can give them. I've seen a lot of people call this game "bland" or "boring" in design, but when you see the half-dog-zombie monsters, crystallized orcs, and lavish outfits for the royalty and upper-class members of this game, I think it's a lot harder to call Forspoken "boring."
In reality, this game has a good amount of good, settled in with a good amount of bad. It's a game I don't think I can dissect too much outside of listing what I liked and what I didn't.
For what I liked? To start, the gameplay and traversal were pretty fun. I don't think there's a lot of great open-world games that want you to move at the speed of light, dodging through rocks, mountains, craters, and valleys, but Forspoken is totally okay with you skipping around its world as you check off objectives and quests (more on this later). It's fun to feel so free, and I think it gave me a lot of good memories with something like Spider-Man or Infamous coming to mind. It's not just a generic horseback or trodding through the world game, it wants you to rush through it and lessen the limitations you might feel in other open-world games.
On the gameplay side, it's a mostly good game with a few modifications that would have helped it be better. I think the game has overall good gameplay, and most importantly, it's unique. It's a good mix of peppering in spells, assists, and ending your attack with a crushing ultimate attack. It doesn't really go beyond this in any tree - one of my gripes - but it does a good job being this magical fusion of DMC and generic guard-breaking, enemy weakness spamming you'd see in a Ubisoft game.
I'm also generally favorable on the way this game handles upgrades - it's fun and again reminescent of something like Infamous when you're picking up the blue mana pools around the world. These are used to purchase new spells and enhance your abilities, and on top of this, you're able to change challenges at certain markers in the open world to enhance that specific ability better with a challenge, also permanently making Frey stronger. This is one of the best ways I've seen a game do this, outside of some challenges being highly situational and hard to accomplish. There really shouldn't have been a limit of three of these you can obtain at one time (it's three, and sometimes you can be in a story mission, unable to change these from a menu or anywhere else until you are back at at a safehouse).
Getting more into the meh or bad parts of this game, there's really no shortage on where to go. On the world design, I'm sort of in the middle. The strange obelisks, the gothic architecture of certain castles and each bosses domain? Very, very good. On the other side? Yeah, there are a lot of areas in this game that are fields and plains. Fields, and more plains. Did I mention they had fields and plains with some enemies in a generic looking field of rubble from a town? Forspoken does a great job on the main path of the game, but veering off to the side can really ruin the magic of the game and put you in sort of that open-world nausea so many of us face when being bored while playing these games.
The story for the game, again, is mixed. I think the game was written pretty well to start, but once you reach the sort of "isekai" moment for Frey...yeah, we're talking YA fiction levels of dialogue. Generic swearing, Marvel-isms, and just a lot of tell-not-showing. It's something that can sometimes, on occasion, actually land well. Frey's voice-actor does a pretty good job of selling the frustration and anger of being trapped in this other world, but the dialogue choices are pretty often mediocre and not what even a normal person would say in a lot of these scenarios.
Along with that, there is a lot of talking in the open-world segment, but I don't find it any more infurating most JRPGs are with repeated voice lines after combat or while exploring dungeons in games of their own. I kinda hate to see people bring that up and go to see something like Xenoblade or Persona or even games Square Enix has made in their favorites. It's repetitive and annoying but no more annoying than most games that have only thirty to fifty voice lines per character.
I think if there's anything to rag on this game for, it's for the massive lack of side content, fun minigames, or really anything to do other than progress the story. There are fun boss-fights and dungeons to explore, but for one of those, there are three "visit an empty town and kill some enemies". Or even better, sit at a statue while we raise your health or defense by +1. Really nothing engaging to see while you are progressing the story. The townspeople missions are all horrifically bland fetch-quests as well, most of them not even requiring that you leave town, but instead running chores for the townspeople as they spout off about how much they hate you (Frey is pretty much hated for 2/3rds of this game by most of the town). This game really has some of the most lackluster side content that will be making this platinum on PSN much more frustrating than if it just had the dungeons, difficult bosses, and more fun challenge runs left in as side content.
Overall, I think this is a good open world game as a bargain bin game. I got this for $20 and have no regrets in beating it or playing through it, unlike if I had maybe bought this for $70 at launch.