Forspoken is a new action RPG from game developer Square Enix that has received a lot of internet attention recently, both good and bad. The game follows a young New Yorker named Frey who is suddenly transported to the mystical world of Athia. After becoming allies with a sentient bracelet named Cuff, Frey is tasked with restoring peace to Athia using her newfound magical abilities.
The game has received many mixed reviews since its release at the end of January 2023 and has a plethora of fans and critics alike. However, the game certainly isn’t a bomb by any means, and it has plenty of interesting magic systems, items, and abilities to keep players entertained. There are also several fun features of the game that may not be obvious to most players.
1 Gather Items Without Interaction
In any open-world style RPG, gathering resources is a massive part of the gameplay. In the early stages, it can feel like a bit of a treasure hunt to find exactly what you need. However, after hours upon hours of running around and interacting with every shiny object, it gets pretty old.
Thankfully, one of Forspoken’s useful hidden abilities is automatic item gathering. This can be switched on and off in the game's settings and will allow players to gather what they need without pressing any buttons.
2 Auto-Unlock Chests
Similarly to item gathering, the game features plenty of ornate chests around the map that players will need to solve sliding puzzles in order to open. These chests contain old coins, which are the primary currency of Athia and essential for successful gameplay.
While the puzzles are a fun little challenge, they too become rather tedious, given just how prolific they are in the game. If they wish to, players can turn on the automatic lock-picking setting and skip the puzzles when they open chests.
3 Fill Your Home With Familiars
In all the best action RPGs, players can interact with various cute critters around the world and even put them to good use in their gameplay. While usually these animals usually tend to be more utilitarian ones like horses, Forspoken breaks with tradition to allow players to adopt familiars.
These familiars are cat-like creatures that can be found in various spots around the world. Frey can adopt them into her home and even use old coins to buy them toys. Having a house full of cute kitties can make the otherwise dark world of Athia feel more like home.
4 Avoid Fall Damage
On the whole, Forspoken is incredibly lenient with fall damage. Players won’t die or take any health damage per se, but falling from a great height will incur a loss of stamina. This will greatly affect the pace of the game and can be rather annoying.
However, Forspoken gameplay includes a neat little workaround for this. If players attack or use any other action just before they hit the ground, this will counteract the fall and allow players to land without any loss of stamina.
5 Switch Between Magic With The Touchpad
For those playing Forspoken on the PlayStation 5, there’s a much easier way to switch between magic trees while playing. As Frey progresses through the game, players will get access to several kinds of magic. Success in the game requires the use of all these magic varieties.
Most players will use the D-pad to switch through these varieties, but this is much slower and will scroll through all the types to get to the one that players need. If players instead use the touchpad, a swipe in each direction will select a specific type of magic – left for red, right for purple, down for blue, and up for green.
6 Auto-Select Support Spells
Forspoken has faced some criticism in regards to the settings that it switches off by default. As a result, there are plenty of useful abilities hidden away in the settings menu. One of these settings is the automatic support spell-switching.
Turning on this setting will cause the game to automatically switch to a support spell once Frey has used a magic attack. Though it may not seem like a huge problem, this setting will save players plenty of time and stress during fights with enemies.
7 Skip Spell Charge Animations
As players progress through the games, they’ll have the ability to upgrade their spells to higher charges. However, with great power also comes a great drawback. Charging these abilities to the highest level can have lengthy animations that slow down combat and make players vulnerable to attacks.
There is a neat trick to get past this. If players cast a spell immediately after performing a parkour attack, the spell will charge straight to its highest level without any delay. Combining these two attack styles will help end enemies faster and increase the impact of Frey’s spells.
8 Target Enemies’ Weaknesses
There are plenty of different enemies in the game that Frey has to fight, and her magic is her best weapon against them. However, each type of enemy has a specific weakness that players can exploit. Taking advantage of this weakness will speed up players’ combat and make tough fights a little easier.
If players use Cuff to scan the enemy, it will bring up information available about them. Each enemy will be vulnerable or resistant to certain types of magic, and players can use this information to find the most efficient way to defeat them.
9 Use Shimmy To Regain Stamina
The world of Forspoken is incredibly expansive, and players will have a lot of ground to cover to explore it fully. One of the abilities they can gain to improve this is the Shimmy ability. This allows players to traverse much quicker by jumping and flipping as they run.
In its base form, Shimmy consumes a decent amount of stamina to use. But, if players complete its spell crafting challenge, they can upgrade the Shimmy ability to gain stamina instead. This becomes an incredibly useful skill to use in fights as players can regain stamina easily.
10 Tie Up Loose Ends
Though the game is open-world, the storyline of Forspoken is rather linear. Frey has little choice in her destiny to save Athia from the Tantas. In fact, once players do complete the main storyline, the game will automatically boot them to the title screen once more.
But by selecting ‘Continue,’ players will have the opportunity to play through a final chapter in Athia and even redo some missed Detours as well as unlock new ones. This final section of the game has several trophies to be unlocked as well as a bunch of bonus XP and Mana.
Forspoken is available now on PS5 and PC