Forspoken

Introduction

Forspoken is Square Enix's open-world action RPG, developed by Luminous Productions and released on 24 January 2023 at NZ$134.95, currently 70% off at NZ$40.48. It follows Frey Holland, a young New Yorker pulled into the fantasy world of Athia, where she gains a magic cuff granting her elemental powers and a distinctive parkour-based traversal system. It sits at 65% positive ("Mixed") across 4,662 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 1,627 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

Combat genuinely splits opinion

Unlike most negative samples this outlet has read this session, Forspoken's combat and traversal draw real, divided opinion rather than uniform criticism. "The combat is pretty dope, the powers are pretty dope... and you can get pretty creative with combos," reads one review, before marking the game down for other reasons entirely. Another disagrees directly: "Combat is boring after a while and i feel like this game was extremely rushed." This review found both readings recurring throughout its sample — a genuine split rather than one side simply being louder, which is unusual enough to be worth naming on its own.

Two dominant, well-corroborated complaints

What isn't split is criticism of the dialogue and the game's launch performance. Dialogue and writing appear in some critical form across 21 of the 100 negative reviews read, widely described using words like "cringe" and "quippy." "The dialogue is cringe, my PC is more than capable enough to run this game... and it looks terrible graphically," reads one launch-week review pairing both complaints directly. Performance appears with similar frequency (21 of 100), with reviewers describing long load times and stutter even on capable hardware — "for me to open the map, it takes me an average of 8.687 seconds," reads the single most-upvoted review in this outlet's sample, with 3,532 votes, from a reviewer who timed it themselves.

The fallout reached the studio itself

This review independently confirmed an unusually well-documented consequence: barely three months after launch, Square Enix announced on 28 February 2023 that developer Luminous Productions would merge back into the parent company effective 1 May 2023, folding the studio's roughly 150 staff and its Luminous game engine expertise into Square Enix's wider development structure. It's a rare, concrete instance of a poorly-received launch's fallout reaching all the way to a studio's independent existence, comparable in scale to what this outlet found with Arkane Austin's closure after Redfall, though on a smaller and less final scale — Luminous staff were absorbed rather than laid off, and the studio's own patches and DLC continued shipping through 2023.

Verdict

Forspoken is a genuinely divisive game rather than a uniformly bad one — its parkour-and-magic traversal and combat draw real praise from a meaningful share of reviewers even within a largely negative sample, a pattern this review found unusually balanced compared to most disappointing launches covered this session. What it can't escape is consistently mocked dialogue and a rocky launch performance record serious enough that its own developer no longer exists as an independent studio. Worth trying at the current steep discount if the traversal system appeals — just go in with tempered expectations for the writing.