Forspoken Demo First Impressions

Forspoken has had a long build up, but we’re approaching the time of release coming very soon. To help generate a little more hype, Square Enix has released a demo available on PS5. If you were remotely interested in Forspoken, then I would recommend jumping into the demo, before the release on 24th January 2023.

Forspoken is readily available on the PlayStation Store. It’s a fairly unique demo as it appears as if it’s not a section of the game, its an original curated slice of the game. You have a few objectives, you can run around the open world and get a real feel for Forspoken and what its all about – speed, combat and parkour.

So far the response to the demo hasn’t been entirely positive, it’s a very mixed review from players. It’s a marmite game right now, people love it and people hate it. A quick glance at the Forspoken subreddit and you’ll see posts titled “The best game Square has released”. Other players have said they are glad Square released a demo, because now they know to avoid the game until it goes on sale. Ouch.

Personally, I think the demo is pretty good. It’s fast, the combat is fun, and the parkour is interesting. For a demo, it manages to keep me engaged. Whether it’s going to keep me engaged for the whole game, that is a question yet to be answered.

Let’s have a quick recap on Forspoken.

Square Enix’s internal teams are generally known for creating Final Fantasy games, but after Final Fantasy 15 Square decided to do something a little different and founded a new internal Square Studio called Luminous Productions, and their mission was to create new IP AAA games. The studio took the engine developed for Final Fantasy 15 and started development on Forspoken. First known as Project Athia, the game is going to be releasing in Spring 2022.

The main character in Forspoken is Frey Holland who’s played by actor Ella Balinska. Blainska described Frey as “a young woman in a beautiful yet threatening world”. The most recent trailed sees Frey transported from the modern-day New York setting to one with castles and dragons after stepping through a portal arrived in the mystical lands of Athia.

The gameplay in Forspoken appears to be action, adventure, and RPG. Frey moves incredibly fast across the environments, amongst high fidelity backgrounds. As well as traversal across the environments Frey can climb and run up cliff surfaces and jump too, in similar gameplay to that of 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Frey has magical abilities which include forming a shield of light and making vines explode out of the ground at a moment’s notice. Frey can also fire high-speed projectiles at enemies, so it seems like Frey has a decent arsenal at her disposal.

Environments look gorgeous and varied from what we have seen so far which include fantastical architecture, cliff edges, and grasslands. Traversal appears to be a massive component of the game, and getting around the environments quickly and easily will be really important.

Let me know in the comments if you are looking forward to Forspoken.