Leave (opens in new tab) looked pretty good when we played it in late 2021, but a trailer that came out in August 2022 left a very different and much less positive impression. Some of the edgy dialogue, those commentators on Twitter (opens in new tab) compared unfavorably to Joss Whedon quickly dominated the conversation, while the PlayStation 5 reviews that started streaming yesterday found that Forspoken, as PC Gamer features producer Mollie Taylor put it, “bullseye average (opens in new tab).”
We don’t have our own Forspoken review yet – no pre-release PC codes have been submitted for review, so Mollie is still working on it – but you can still get a sense of what the fuss is all about thanks to the Forspoken demos that are now available at Steam (opens in new tab), Epic (opens in new tab)and the Microsoft Store (opens in new tab).
Details on what the demo offers aren’t offered in stores, but Square Enix confirmed it’s the same as the PS5 demo that came out last month.
“This specially crafted demo gives you the opportunity to really dive into the game’s fluid traversal and take on some truly monstrous enemies in combat,” Square Enix said in December (opens in new tab). “Don’t worry about spoilers – there’s no story in this teaser. It’s more about giving you a chance to take part in the super satisfying gameplay!
You are dropped into Avoalet’s Water Garden – a beautiful area of Athia with plenty of room to run around and practice your parkour skills… and plenty of snarling, corrupted beasts to join the fray. You are given five main objectives to but there’s plenty of room to just explore and deepen the entertainingly deep mechanics.”
It’s a hefty download for a demo, clocking in at around 43GB on Steam. However, it can be worth it, especially if you’re not 100% confident in your PC’s capabilities. As we noted when the system requirements (opens in new tab) came out last week, the minimum spec – which includes a GeForce GTX 1060 CPU and 16GB of RAM – will get you 30fps at 720p; if you go to 1440p, still at 30fps, you’ll need an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7 8700K, an AMD RX 6700 XT or Nvidia RTX 3070, and 24GB of RAM, which is both steep and oddly specific. Given that, a chance to see how Forspoken will work on your rig without having to rely on Steam’s refund policy is probably a good thing.
Forspoken on PC is available now for $70 / £65 / €80. We’ll be posting our own review of the PC version shortly.