Topic: Forspoken

@Th3solution After what happened with "Gotham Knights" (another high profile game with middling to negative scores) I'm pretty confident that you're correct and this will be below £40 by Easter. I'll be tempted at that price - the parkour element is pretty good fun.

I have my copy arriving tomorrow. Now that the reviews are mixed at best, I might finally try the demo before opening it. I still have little doubt I'd enjoy it, but $70 is obviously a lot of money and I tend to only get PlayStation exclusives or games that are locks to be one that I would love (like the upcoming second part of Final Fantasy 7 Remake). I still have time to figure things out.

@KilloWertz I’d be really curious to hear your thoughts and impressions, even it you choose to just play the demo and return your copy. When I played the demo it didn’t really help my decision much.

I watched the Digital Foundry video on it and ironically it pushed me a little more towards giving the game a try rather than being a deterrent. The downsides to the game (the lighting, fps performance, assets, and occasional textures / resolution) seem to be offset by several positives they mentioned like the animations, particle effects, excellent map and general openness of the world. I really appreciate technical and graphical excellence, but I probably can live with a few shortcomings. But I’d like to hear some first hand experience from the common player, as it were.

I think it’s inspired by Breath of the Wild, like most open world games now, including Elden Ring. I’ve played neither BotW or ER, but the ability to just see something way off in the distance and then actually go there is a pretty neat reality of these open world games now. With Frey’s traversal abilities it seems truly like a “if you see it, then you can go there and climb it” type of freedom rather than a world that looks open but has invisible barriers all over the place.

And the fact the game can be as short as 12-16 hrs but as long as 40 hrs sounds great. That’s a pretty nice middle ground as opposed to these open world games that all seem to take 100+ hours now.

And like someone else said, I’m prone to support new IP when I can, so I’m starting to feel inclined to give this a try eventually. I hate seeing new ideas flop because it sends a message to developers that we just want endless sequels, prequels, and remakes. Which, to be fair, I love my sequels and have no problem with remakes, but we need fresh IP injected into the AAA space on a regular basis. If we look at the big AAA games coming out this year, a lot of them are established franchises like FF, remakes like Dead Space and RE4, or huge established licensed properties like Hogwarts, Spidey 2, and Jedi Survivor.

If Forspoken crashes and burns then hopefully other new IP like Stellar Blade, Lies of P, or Wo Long can stick the landing.

My copy arrives in an hour or so. Not gonna lie, although I kinda expected a 6/7 meta score, it’s still dampened my expectations for some strange reason… maybe I was holding out some forlorn hope it would actually hit better than expected.

As someone who is relatively content to travel a large map checking off a checklist, I’m sure that I’ll get something out’ve the experience but I was hoping for at least a little more quality than what has been discussed since the embargo lifted. Oh well, at least I get a pretty steelbook I guess 🤷🏽

Been playing it for over 3 hours and I’m really liking it so far. It’s not amazing, but I’m really enjoying the combat and exploration. I’m even liking the banter between Frey and Cuff, which I know some people complained about in the demo.

For what it's worth, in Japan, the land of the Switch, Forspoken is outselling the new Fire Emblem on Amazon.

@Th3solution I will let you know once I play the demo more. I didn't have much time last night, but wanted to at least get a taste of the game and 20 minutes wasn't enough. I didn't really care for the combat in that short span, but like I said, I don't believe that is anywhere near enough time to really give a good opinion.

I accidentally have two copies of it too. Originally Amazon wasn't going to come close to the release date, so I planned on cancelling it and I ended up ordering it from Walmart. I get an email last night that it was shipped from Amazon, so obviously I forgot to cancel. I'll return the copy to Walmart and then decide what I want to do with the copy from Amazon since you now have to pay for return shipping unless you drop it off a UPS Store here. I can do that, it's just not as convenient as it used to be when you could just drop it in one of the UPS drop boxes for free.

@KilloWertz I’ll buy one of your copies for $5. As long as you cover shipping.

@Th3solution The game is in the mail. No need to give me your address...

One thing that does concern me about combat, which was really the one thing I really liked in the demo, is apparently that is quite a late game build you are running and in the actual game, you are getting stuff like one at a time, hours apart, and it isn't until the final stretch you'll have a loadout like in the demo. I'd be interested to hear from people who have the full game, how the combat feels in those early hours when you only have like one spell and limited traversal abilities etc

I am in love with the Demo, but theres probably going to be a sale soon since no one is buying it, so I rather wait than fork over 80 bucks... but I gotta say I love the traversal, the fire blades, the girly capes and stuff. I would be all over this if it was like 40-60 instead.