Forspoken's free demo has launched on PS5, but if you were hoping this might finally answer whether Square Enix's new open-world RPG is going to be any good, it seems we're still not there yet.
You can grab the Forspoken demo on the PlayStation Store. It offers a brief recap of the setting, throws a very short tutorial at you, and then lets you loose to complete a few objectives and run around the open world. It doesn't look like this is a chunk directly taken out of the game - instead, it seems the demo offers a custom sandbox built out of the game assets to offer a taste of the combat and parkour systems.
The response seems seriously mixed so far - by which I mean some people love it and some people hate it, not that everyone thinks it's mediocre. The Forspoken subreddit is currently filled with discussion on the game, and it doesn't take long to see that players are divided.
VGChartz's Craig S: "Who doesn't love a good dose of schadenfreude every now and then? There was no shortage of that on offer in terms of video games last year, hidden in plain sight amongst the more genuine disappointments (I'll leave it for you to decide which category each of the following games falls into).
One unfortunate trend when it comes to the biggest disappointments of the last year was that so many were new IPs, including Bethesda's latest major release Starfield, the Arkane Studio B-team's abortive attempt at a co-op vampire shooter, and Square Enix's action RPG Forspoken. Mega-franchise Call of Duty and the perennially delayed The Lord of the Rings: Gollum round out the list of Nominees."
I think disappointing and bad are not the same thing.
The article calls out lotr Gollum that was not disappointing it was bad
Redfall is both disappointing and bad.
starfield, MW3 sure disappointing.
But if I was to add some disappointments of the year I'd add
firewall ultra absolutely a dumpster fire that killed the studio.
007 goldeneye the port of the N64 game it's disappointing as we didn't get the rare remaster version and the switch version has very poor controls.
Rdr was not the remake we wanted a simple port that didn't even run at 60 fps on launch on ps5
Jedi survivor Just broken on day 1
I recently came back to Redfall, my lord...the controls and movement were a disgrace! I felt like my character was drunk. Zero fine movement control. The XBOX producers on this game should be fired.
I think Diablo IV deserves to be on this list. While not the worst made game, it was one of the most disappointing. Many of us had such high expectations for it and it turned out to be so incredibly dull, a slog to play.
Jedi Survivor was disappointing for me because I waited until a month ago to play it and it still has major issues. My saves were getting corrupted so I had to restart an old save however many times and a plethora of other bugs.
Of course there is Redfall Starfield but to me it’s MS overhype underdeliver so I expected it to some extent but not as bad as it was.
Gollum had little to no expectations.
Forspoken was a disappointment but not as bad as it was made out to be especially if you turned on Japanese voice acting. It was a 7 type of game but it looked like it could have been better.
Diablo 4 was scored well at launch but all my friends that loved and played 3 (after years of swasons) up until 4 were disappointed with 4 and don’t play it anymore .
Factions getting canceled was a bit of a disappointment. Not huge as I don’t play gaas much but it was disappointing.
Nintendo not releasing Switch 2 again was disappointing to me. I don’t use my Switch much it’s just so outdated and mosty kiddy games release some more games that I want to play not my kids!
No physical copy for Alan Wake 3 disappointing as hell, actually beyond that it is upsetting (to some extent,I will live of course)
Gamers getting used to owning nothing and renting games is very disappointing. I don’t watch Netflix anymore it’s mosty mediocre crap and rental services will go that direction if allowed.
Ahmed from eXputer writes "The quality of PC ports has been seeing a severe decline recently, and many gamers have had enough."
Games so bad, they made Redfall look honorable. Yeesh.
It can be an unfortunate trend in our industry to lump games people were looking forward to that didn't end up meeting their expectations and were just okay (Forspoken) with games that are broken (Gollum) or little more than asset flips (The Day Before). If expectations (and price) had been set appropriately, Forspoken wouldn't even be that bad.
I just couldn’t get into it. The gameplay isn’t that great and the combat is pretty average. The world is also pretty barren. Not to mention the main character is annoying and the HDR is awful.
Pretty average game tbh. I don't think it's going to set the world on fire, and it certainly feels like Square pulled a fast one here by having Sony pay for 2 years of exclusivity for this.
It's really just not good. Boring, empty world. Basic combat. You could literally just alternate circle button and R2 and she just seeks out an enemy on her own. The only skill required is just keep alternating two buttons. Her chatter is fucking terrible. Yes, I know you can turn it off, but then it's just so quiet.
It was lame.
It's okay for people to be divided. My favorite games are not everyone's favorite. Totally fine. I enjoyed it. Specifically I like the flow and combat system. Really makes you feel like a powerhouse. I liked the fact that the world wasn't filled with a bunch of NPCs. I'm actually excited for the story as it's obvious that it has been largely withheld as it should be in my eyes. It is also visual impressive at first I found the dialogue to be annoying but it grew on me.