Recent reviews by exe3

Not much to go through since it's in early access with limited content but of what i've played I quite like it. Definitely brings back that SSX Tricky vibe (which I haven't played in near 20 years sadly) while still doing some things a little differently. Most difficulties I have are with trying to play it exactly like SSX (eg: boost occurs automatically upon landing good tricks rather than accumulating a boost bar through good tricks). Unless i've missed it in my brief play session a tutorial would be helpful at some point to better explain how the mechanics work as the method for performing freaky tricks was something I discovered by accident (i'll admit I don't think my younger self ever understood how to perform Uber moves either) and I still don't understand why I would use the manual like ability.

Right now the game just needs more content and a ton of polish (map layouts are great but visually can be a little sparse and basic). All the barebones signs of early access are in full force so hopefully this game gets the sales it needs so it can get the updates it needs to polish and flesh out the game. I never do early access but I had to make an exception here, here's hoping things turn out well.

Spread the word! Something for us SSX fans is finally here!

An improvement in pretty much every way from the main game. Very much a window into what the main game could have been.

I tossed and turned over whether to recommend or not recommend because while there are plenty of 5-6/10 elements there's also a bunch of 8-9/10 elements too that are genuinely awesome. The game clearly went through some serious development hell with Square Enix eventually pulling the plug and telling the team to ship what was there but the team was onto something great with an incredibly fun combat system, fluid parkour traversal mechanics an in depth world and solid if not flawed story.

It does suck that the visuals are bland and the campaigns structure falls apart about "half" way through where swathes of content were clearly cut to throw the game out (there's a very obviously missing boss fight too). The map was excessively large and unused in the campaign and actual side missions are near non-existent with the excessively large map being filled with random busywork combat scenarios which end up being fun thanks to once again the exceptional combat system but ultimately can only hold your interest for so long.

The only real criticism towards the combat would be that there's maybe too many spells that are cumbersome to cycle through (and that with the super rushed second half you don't spend any time with the last two ability sets).

And as for the elephant in the room. The story is fine and the setting is actually pretty decent and detailed. The narrative while not always hitting did have touching moments and some well done twists that would have absolutely landed harder if the game had been given more time. Otherwise there was really only two pieces of atrocious dialogue which you'll note are the only two pieces of dialogue in the game that got meme'd to death. They absolutely should have been removed but they were extreme outliers that did not represent the writing overall.

The DLC on the other hand feels like it was given the time to be finished and come out as intended and as such it's better in almost every way to the main game and far more representative I think of what the original vision for Forspoken was. As usual it's smaller in scope and gives a smaller list of abilities to use but with that it gives focus to tell a specific story and provide a focused gameplay experience and it's all the better for it. As an aside I will say that it also does wonders to have an actual antagonistic force rather than just monsters everywhere.

Ultimately I give the upvote because I do want to see a better, more focused team using an engine not known for being impossible to work with take this amazing concept and setting and make the sequel (that the DLC very much points towards) the original could and should have been. The combat and parkour were REALLY good (try the demo if you don't believe me), I can't understate that despite how much of the rest of the game turned out. In the end it was still really fun to fight things.

(spoilers?)

Also just throwing it out there I wish Isekai's would stop ignoring the world the protagonist originally came from. Forspoken wasn't as bad in this regard as it was her primary focus for most of the story to get home but it would be nice if that goal could have been achieved with a dual narrative opening up with her spending time in both New York and Athia.

Simply put the timer ruins the game. It's just far too restrictive in how it demands you start and complete specific main missions at specific times. Fail states forcing complete restarts of the campaign are entirely possible and that's really bad. If the game just had the 72 hour main timer without forcing main missions be started or completed to certain times it would be fine. I finally gave up on the game after it put me in a state where I didn't have enough time to actually go out and save some people but the alternative was to leave the game just sitting there and running for 10-15mins until the next mission became available.

Seriously I have no issue with the idea of being thrown in a playground with 72 hours to do what you can or want, but to segment the main missions and force you to complete them by certain times within that 72 hours ruins the game.

Awesome game. Tango deserved better.

For every good idea there is poor execution.

Pawns? Sounds cool, too bad the AI is terrible often not doing what's needed (not buffing your weapons, falling to their deaths taking all the items you gave with them) and generally not feeling that impactful to actual combat.

Climbing enemies? This one stings as it was the sole reason I picked this game up and I was looking forward to something similar to Shadow of the Colossus but it was so underbaked and underutilized it SHOULD have been removed. Climbing enemies serves little to no purpose and doesn't really work most of the time either.

Combat? It starts out solid but doesn't evolve. Your moveset for any particular vocation is extremely limited and causes the game to get extremely repetitive extremely quickly. Also I hated stamina management, it got tedious when enemies had 9999999999 health and just wasn't fun.

Story? Haphazardly flops between largely unconnected subplots and just feels completely thrown together with little to no reason. A lot of it felt like an excuse to explain gameplay mechanics.

This and more on top of all the wonder of holding forwards for long periods of time while you wait for the character to traverse A to B in a bland empty open world. Lots of grinding and inventory management as well. Simply put I play games to have fun and running around in circles grinding the XP and material to spend tons of time in inventory screens putting together armor and weapons just so that a boss doesn't take 20 tedious minutes to beat is not fun.

It's a barely average game that gained a cult following who made the game look better than it is. I genuinely wish I had not played it.

I felt like I was just sitting there waiting for things to complete all the time without actually doing interesting things or solving interesting problems with what to build and where.

I give it a thumbs up as it is polished, well made and generally fun. My main criticisms is that it was fairly easy (only a few puzzles made me stop and think and not for too long) and all the puzzles are super quick to execute once figured out which can be a little unsatisfying after a while. The new mechanics were welcome however.

This was a blast to play. Fun story and cool concept. Main criticisms would be that I expected the two characters mechanics to intermingle more like that sequence where you control Trevor on one side while having Angela answer questions at the same time.

I found the demo pretty representative of the game so give that a go if you're on the fence.

Very unintuitive solutions that require pedantic levels of precise object placement that feels more like i'm exploiting the games poor physics system rather than attaining a genuine solution. There's a problem with your puzzle game if you have to look up a solution and the solution presented still looks wrong.