Tokyo Game Show 2022 Complete Coverage

Tokyo Game Show 2022 - Forspoken Makes You Feel Like a Magical Powerhouse

There are few upcoming games I'm more excited for than Square-Enix's dive into the isekai genre with Forspoken. And luckily for me, I was able to spend some time with the game at Tokyo Game Show 2022.

The demo itself begins with a quick tutorial, teaching about magical parkour—i.e., dashing across the open world at high speed—and the basics of combat. Basically, you have a selection of magic spells across two elements—earth and fire. When at close range, you simply do an elemental melee combo but at range do chargeable magic attacks. The parkour button becomes a doge button in combat and you are able to use a grapple hook of sorts to pull yourself right up to enemies at a moment's notice. What this means is that you have a ton of versatility in combat—and can change both your range and attack style at a moment's notice. Or to put it another way, you feel like an overpowered magical badass.

After the tutorial, the TGS demo drops you right into the open world and highlights several objectives—like finding a safe house (where you can upgrade gear and rest) or discovering a monument that powers you up.

The best part of the demo is the objective to clear a bridge of enemy forces. The bridge is filled with bow wielding enemies which forces you to learn how to deal with ranged opponents—i.e., always keep moving. Once they're eliminated, you face off against an armor-clad woman with a set of scales in her left hand. The trick to this fight is that she changes her elemental weakness based on the element of your attacks. Thus, to beat her you must continuously swap between earth and fire spells to be able to damage her—even as you evade her quick and powerful melee attacks. It was very cool and incredibly flashy.

While the game feels polished overall, I have to admit that traversing the open world was a bit annoying. As magical parkour uses up your MP whether you're in combat or not, the game is constantly slamming on the breaks whenever you temporarily run out. Likewise, the numerous vertical cliffs seem like they should be climbable in some form or fashion but at least with the powers included in the demo, they simply served as walls that forced me to take the long way around to most objectives.

Still, even with these minor issues, I am even more excited for Forspoken than I was heading in. Honestly, January can't come soon enough.

Forspoken is scheduled to be released on January 24, 2023 for PlayStation 5 and Windows.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.