So, I paltinumed Forspoken and thr DLC a few weeks ago and I have to say of the big 3 anticipated RPG releases this year, Hogwarts Legacy, FF 16, and Forspoken, Forspoken truly impressed me.

I will say of the 3, FF 16 is by far my favorite and consistently the best as it comes to gameplay, story, lore, and graphics.

Of the 3 Hogwarts Legacy whole the most graphically beautiful game, felt so hollow and undone. The story was basic and hardly memorable. While they tapped into established HL facts and lore they built nothing of their own that really had you wanting to explore the world to know the world. Also, of the three gameplay was the worst. While it bad big set pieces for battles you'd get maybe 4 or 5 enemies max or very limited waves/back up. Even as you learned more spells your combat never felt mastered because the cooling time and AI difficult either made them sponges so you resorted to using thr basic spell more, or they died too quickly so you couldn't use too many cool combos.

As someone who usually plays a mage or red mage/battle mage, these three games were highly anticipated. FF 16 definitely leaned more towards the battle aspect of a red mage, but the magic part felt kind of lackluster and not fully fleshed out.

Enter Forspoken, while the plot wasn't the best (although much better in thr DLC) the Lore of the world was amazing. Learning about the Rheddig and Cuff and the Tantas was epic. Forspoken and the enemies in the labyrinth really made it feel like a world that had deep and epic mysteries. The abominations gave the idea the Break and the problems of the world were far from new (this is something I wish FF 16 would expand more on because I definitely wanted to know about the ancient civilizations and more ancient creatures).

But what I really loved most of all was the gameplay in Forspoken. I loved the combat and how as your spells learned, used, and mastered grew you felt and visually saw yourself become a more powerful magic user. I also loved the options of close ranged magic combat or long range. Even more so, I loved that you could quickly change from one school of magic to another. Not only the d pad, but you could learn a combo attack to seamlessly transition to another school and continue your combos.

The traversal magic was masterfully used in this game. FF 16 and HL made transversing the world's a slog outside of fast travel. But forspoken actually made distance travel fun and enjoyable. Sometimes I found myself doing some Skyrim mountain climbing just to reach new areas in a more direct way. Sure, you could fast travel, but when you couldn't or didn't want to, I wasn't mad about it. It definitely made going through the map post-game less of a drag.

Overall, was Forspoken game of the year or a game of the year contender? Heck no. Did it need to be? Also, no.

Studios and players need to realize that solid middle of the road games are fine and fun. Some of the franchises we have now started as middle of the road games that built off of that to epic games. We have this desire for games to be the next big tent pole (especially new games for a new console early in the life span), but hey being okay, is just fine.

Plus, the fact that Forspoken allows you to recycle all of your resources to other resources needs to be implemented in all games going forward.