I still find myself puzzled by Forspoken whenever I remember it.
I was reflecting on Wuthering Waves, and the thought entered my mind that "the traversal is better than Forspoken's".
Forspoken's writing was cringe, but I still found myself interested in the story, and world. It felt like there was a solid basis to explore in there.
And while I found the combat lost its lustre disappointingly quick, I can see someone who clicked with the mechanics getting really into it.
But the movement... the traversal... it feels so bad. How did that not get picked up on in playtesting? The game hinges so much on its "flow" movement to get from place to place. Even if you want to rely on fast travel instead, fast travel points need to be unlocked by reaching them on foot, and they're spread apart.
So it's crucial that movement feels fun, and smooth, and honestly it felt anything but. Of course the terrain design has some blame in that, as the surfaces you need to cross contain too many obstacles and ledges. So you keep bumping into things, and whenever you ascend even the smallest ledge while in "flow" movement, Frey decides to hang in the air for a second when she crests the top, and can't go forward again until her feet hit the ground. It brings your momentum to a screeching halt every time, and honestly gets kinda exhausting after a while.
Seriously, how did they not pick up on something that obvious? Ideally Frey should have zipped forwards again as soon as she got up there, rather than having that awkward pause each time. I unlocked the grappling hook that can help pull you forward, but adding another button to keep track of for traversal didn't make it any less awkward. Besides, in order to aim the grappling hook you have to enter bullet time. Relying on the auto-targeting will often smack you right into a rock.
A puzzling game to an almost fascinating degree. I find it hard to imagine them testing that for very long without realising the problems, and yet...
I played it late, because I got it on sale for a deep discount, which had given them time to put out all sorts of patches to improve it, and yet it still felt that bad. Maybe they had reached a stage of development where by the time they realised the problems, they could no longer fix them.