Forspoken debuts on PC with low approval among gamers

Forspoken is now available for PS5 and PC. One of the first big releases of 2023 is the hot topic among games, be it for better or worse. PC Gamers had access to the new Square Enix title just hours after its release for PS5. On Steam, the game had a peak release of more than 12,000 players, but approval is around 40%.

Available for about 18 hours on PC (at the time of publishing this news), Forspoken joined 12,579 concurrent players on Steam within the first few hours of release. The game has approx. 1300 reviews and 47% approval. Among them, more than 700 are negative reviews.

The biggest complaints are about the lack of optimization and full price, US$ 70 abroad and R$ 350 here. The third most common complaint seems to be about how uninteresting Forspoken is, with various criticisms for protagonist Frey’s conversations with her bracelet, poor voice acting, and numerous profanities. Many users of Valve’s platform have already asked for a refund.

Forspoken for PC lacks optimization

Since the most common complaint is lack of optimization, let’s focus on that. Many users reveal their settings, most with PCs with enough headroom to run heavy games above 1080p, but struggling to hit 60 FPS even at low quality.

Some complain about the poor quality of the textures, even at the highest graphics preset, and this is something I noticed while playing the demo. In my experience running the game at 1080p at default quality (which would be average) it’s pretty much impossible to get to 60 FPS without DLSS. My PC has an RTX 2060, Ryzen 5 2600X, 16GB, and SSD.

One thing that “killed” the game in my run was particle effects during combat. In intense fights, with multiple enemies and Frey’s many magic attacks, performance dropped below 20 FPS until the scene clutter ended.

Here’s a sidebar: Digital Foundry’s analysis of the PS5 version reveals that Forspoken has serious shadow issues. The video compares the game to Final Fantasy XV, which is also from Luminous Productions, but offers a more interesting result in this regard.

The game lacks ambient occlusion and some shadows are not rendered realistically, causing the game to lack the depth and realism that well-applied shadows bring.

On Metacritic, Forspoken has an average of 68 among press reviews. User reviews are not yet available on the platform.

If you’ve been playing Forspoken, please tell us about your experience.

Forspoken runs at 1440p at 60fps on PS5, but drops to 720p at some points
At certain times, all modes experience frame drops.

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Source: SteamDB