Forspoken

Forspoken is an action RPG from Luminous Productions, a studio previously associated with the development of Final Fantasy XV, telling the story of New York heroine Frey Holland, transported by a mysterious magical bracelet into the fantasy world of Athia, ravaged by a curse called the Break. The game's main draw is its movement system — the heroine can parkour, glide across terrain, and cover distances using magic woven directly into her running and jumping, which makes traveling through the open world one of the smoothest and fastest experiences of its kind. Combat combines elemental magic of fire, ice, earth, and lightning with dodging, and attack combinations can be freely tailored to your preferred playstyle.

On PlayStation 5, the game makes full use of the fast storage and graphics processing power to render an expansive landscape with virtually no perceptible loading, and offers both a performance mode and a graphics mode with higher resolution. Visually the game feels lavish, with varied biomes ranging from open plains and deserts to corrupted, darkness-stricken areas full of strange growths. The soundtrack underscores the contrast between the world's beauty and its gradual decay, though the heroine's dialogue, full of modern slang, split players between those who found the humor fitting and those who found it jarring and out of place.

Forspoken met with a mixed reception at launch, mainly because of its character writing and dialogue, even though the movement system and the technical execution of the open world were repeatedly praised as among the best on the platform. Later updates and a paid expansion attempted to fine-tune the story's pacing and combat balance, which partly reconciled part of the audience with its initial shortcomings. Today the game is often remembered as an example of a title where the individual components — movement, graphics, combat — each work excellently on their own but never quite fit into a fully convincing, cohesive whole.

Why play it: The movement system and technical execution rank among the best on the platform, but due to weaker character writing it's more of a title for players who can tolerate the individual pieces not fitting into a fully cohesive whole.