While the Luminous Engine is clearly capable of creating beautiful game worlds like Forspoken with especially impressive particles, difficulty wasn't always the highlight for the engine's first title. However, the difficulty options seen so far in Forspoken's surprise demo are a clear sign that Luminous Productions is doing what it can to balance accessibility with intense challenges for players who want them.
These difficulty options in Forspoken also go a little further than just giving enemies larger health pools and more damage. It's a major step up from the difficulty in Final Fantasy 15, which often gave players too much leeway to recover from even complete party wipes in the middle of a boss fight. That being said, there are still limits to the escalating difficulty, especially when it comes to enemy AI.
Final Fantasy 15's Trouble with Difficulty
The reason why some Square Enix fans might be worried about the difficulty in Forspoken is because of comparisons being made to Final Fantasy 15. Since both games were built under the same Luminous Engine, it is to be expected that the gameplay of each will be at least somewhat similar. So, with the leading criticism against Final Fantasy 15 in 2016 being that the game was far too easy for most players, some fans are worried that Luminous Productions might not be able to make a challenging enough experience in its flagship engine.
In most cases, the problems with Final Fantasy 15's difficulty comes from the ability to overstock and overuse healing items that can completely recover the party from what should be devastating attacks. While players do have the ability to limit themselves on how much they rely on this type of healing, the game itself rarely puts harsh enough limits on the availability of hi-potions and phoenix downs in order to offer too many real challenges. Of course, on the rare occasions where items are limited, such as Final Fantasy 15's Costlemark Tower dungeon, the potential for a more challenging experience can be felt.
Forspoken's Difficulty Slider
As is often the case for Action-RPGs, Forspoken comes with a difficulty slider, which mostly allows players to adjust the health and damage output of enemies. In the Forspoken demo, the slider itself is simple enough and can be tweaked any time the player is out of combat. That does mean, however, that setting the difficulty too hard and then entering a fight the player is unprepared for can easily lead to a quick death, as they'll be stuck fighting stronger enemies until they either win or retreat.
Of course, this is a smaller step towards making Forspoken a more challenging experience, as the slider itself only really repositions the balance of health and damage in and out of the player's favor. This setting was actually present in Final Fantasy 15, capable of turning some of the most difficult boss fights into massive damage sponges that could take a while to beat. In that case, if Forspoken is looking to market itself to thrill-seeking players who want more challenge in their games, it will need more than high damaging bosses and large health pools.
Limited Healing With Craftable Potions
One of the best ways that Forspoken adjusts the difficulty problems from Final Fantasy 15 is through the use of the craftable Healing Draughts that are strictly limited in two ways. First, the player can only make these specific potions at the crafting tables, which in the demo is only available in the Pilgrim's Refuge at the start of the area. Second, Frey can only hold a limited amount of these Healing Draughts, meaning that players can't overstock on potions and simply heal their way through tough encounters.
This limit to the Healing Draughts actually makes the health system in Forspoken very similar to the Estus Flasks from Dark Souls, by only letting players replenish their supply at rest areas. Combining the locations where players can find Healing Draughts with the limit of how many can be held, and the ability to easily trivialize combat from Final Fantasy 15 is gone. However, that doesn't mean that Luminous Productions hasn't given players more accessible ways to engage in gameplay for those who aren't specifically looking for a challenge.
Frey's Auto-Evading Parkour
The Magic Parkour in Forspoken might be the landmark feature when the game finally arrives later this year. Not only does this mechanic give players the ability to traverse the world at a quick pace, but it also has several uses inside of combat. Most notably, the parkour is the key to evading damage, by letting players position themselves in and out of range of attacks, while also actively dodging incoming damage.
In addition to the ability to simply press a button and activate magic parkour, there is also an option that can be toggled mid-combat that will let Frey automatically evade whenever being attacked. For most players, this can certainly trivialize combat, especially since the setting is defaulted to be on. However, for players not looking for more intense challenges and might be more interested in Forspoken's narrative and Frey's journey, this goes a long way to make the game accessible to a wider variety of fans.
Enemy AI Improvements Needed Before Release
Beyond the combination of accessibility and difficulty options, there are still a few places where Luminous Productions might be able to improve on the adjustable challenge. The most notable change that could make the harder difficulty settings in Forspoken is the enemy AI and aggression to improve the challenge. This is because, at the moment, Forspoken's magic combat is impressively reactive, especially when playing without the auto-evasion, but enemies can be far too passive to make the most of this.
Changing enemy aggression could come in a number of ways, by either limiting the downtime between attacks and combos or allowing more opponents to attack at the same time. This could also be enhanced by changing the telegraphing of these rapid attacks as well, by letting the difficulty slider also adjust how early and how frequently the game warns the player of oncoming attacks with the magic ring that appears around Frey. There are still a handful of other ways that Forspoken can maximize its dynamic combat as development continues leading to the upcoming release.
Forspoken is set to release on January 24, 2023, for PC and PS5.