The release of Luminous Productions and Square Enix’s upcoming magical adventure Forspoken is finally on the horizon after being pushed back.
Forspoken follows the protagonist Frey Holland, who after having a tough time in New York City is transported to the world of Athia.
The majority of Athia’s inhabitants appear to have been affected by the Break, transforming all life into monstrous forms.
While doing battle with these corrupted lifeforms Frey will also battle the Tantas, who have also been taken over by the Break, transforming them into powerful sorceresses who rule over Athia.
Frey Holland will be partnered with a sentient bracelet called Cuff who will aid her on this journey while providing much of the game's witty banter.
Before its release next year, The Mirror was invited by Square Enix to play an early build of the game.
This early build took place in Avaolet, a vast region designed to show off the game's features. Avaolet’s open world was huge, filled with forts, islands, monstrous enemies, and more.
There was so much scattered across this region that showcased what can be experienced in Athia.
Exploration was fantastic with Frey’s parkour allowing her to scale large structures and reach new areas.
Avaolet allowed players to explore its world at their leisure, scanning the landscape for key locations and points of interest.
Hidden within Avaolet are locations that will allow Frey to fast travel and have a base where she can craft new items.
There were several dungeons and battle hotspots that offer different levels of challenges from defeating hordes of the Breakborn or vanquishing powerful bosses that roam the land.
Avaolet was only a small sample of what Forspoken has to offer and if it's a real representation of what players can experience in the full game then they are in for a wild ride.
Combat in Forspoke was one of the highlights during this early build, with Frey having access to a large number of magical skills.
She was able to showcase different magical styles that demonstrated her diverse skill set. Each of the magical abilities will be based on an element such as fire or earth.
They are then broken down into attack and support skills. What I did love is how each magical style catered to a different type of playstyle.
Frey’s base magic focused on projectile attacks with plants and ground attacks while switching to Sila’s fire-based magic allowed for powerful close combat skills.
Players will be able to switch between these magical skills on the fly and upgrade them via Frey’s skill tree.
The beauty of Forspoken’s combat is how open it is, allowing players to create their own combos and devise their own strategies with a diverse range of attacks.
For instance when using Sila’s fire magic, players can summon a Legion of soldiers to attack one set of enemies while she does extra damage with her Rage or Blast slice on the other.
What’s even more interesting is each attack will do something different depending on how long the attack button is pressed for granting more strategic options.
I am looking forward to seeing all the different types of magic Frey can learn and how they can be mixed and matched during battle. Especially the ultimate attacks and seeing how parkour plays a bigger role in combat.
During this early build, Avaolet featured a wide variety of enemies mixed with the Breakborn and Breakbeast.
The Breakborn came in an array of forms that enabled me to test out different combat strategies on them, especially when Frey had to liberate Fort Eminn.
That being said, the Breakbeast provided the biggest challenge as initially there wasn’t a feasible strategy to defeat them, which provided the best training for me to practice different combat strategies with Frey’s wide range of attacks.
The boss battles weren’t hugely impressive as they were mainly powered-up versions of the weaker enemies. It will be very interesting to see how the boss battles with the Tantas play out.
One of my highlights was the banter between Frey and Cuff which was funny and witty during each back and forth.
However, there was a lot of repetition in what was being said with Cuff cracking the same deadpan jokes or words of encouragement.
Seeing as this is an early build hopefully there will be less repetition as the writing was very entertaining when it was fresh.
Forspoken is shaping up to be a very intriguing game filled with enthralling combat in a captivating world.
From what I’ve played so far Forspoken looks to be on the right track to be a great game but will need a stellar story and entertaining cast of characters to set itself apart from other open-world games.
Forspoken is set to be released in 2023 on the PlayStation 5 and PC
