No Joke! On April 1st, I was privileged to play the demo of ‘Forestrike’, developed by Skeleton Crew Studio and Thomas Olsson, and published by Devolver Digital. You can read my preview here, but like the power of the Forestriker, this review will draw lessons from the past, allowing you to foresee whether to purchase Forestike or not.

You play as Yu, a Forestriker, but what is a Forestriker? A Forestriker is a gifted martial artist who can envision combat scenarios in their mind before they are enacted in real-time. The plot revolves around the Emperor being influenced by an evil Admiral, resulting in the people’s suffering. Yu takes on the journey to free the Emperor from this influence.

My excitement for the concept of Forestrike remained high, and I was still not disappointed by the gameplay. The running of combat scenarios retained the feeling of watching a martial arts movie where the protagonist plays out the combat before whooping everyone’s arse. The combat remains a puzzle as you try different tactics to achieve the optimal result.

The variety of enemies was certainly expanded on from the demo. As you progress further into the four areas of countryside, mountains, city, and palace, the challenge will become deeper as those enemies will begin to appear in earlier stages than when you first encountered them.

This will further change your approach in each scenario, as in the demo, you only had to contend with different abilities, such as dodging, blocking, or power attacks, from a static group of enemies. Now, you can get enemies suddenly appearing from later stages in early stages.

I found this daunting, as it increased the difficulty exponentially, to the point where I became frustrated and put the game down for several days, sneering at the thought of returning to it for another try.

Eventually, I reached a turning point in Forestike where unlocking additional Masters from the five schools of Leaf, Cold Eye, Storm, Monkey, and, I assume, the last one is Tiger, as I have yet to discover how to unlock that school, allowed me to find a suite of moves that suited my playstyle.

This brings me to my thoughts on the expansion of the Forestrike story. The demo had a simple concept, and the full release has obviously expanded on it. To begin, I was invested in talking to the different Masters and learning more as I progressed deeper into the stages of freeing the Emperor. But, with the frustration of difficulty on top of the convoluted story that gets unpacked the further you get, I soon became uninvested, rushing past unscripted dialogues.

It was at the point when I completed my first successful run, Forestrike presented that I had only managed to complete one fifth of the overall expectation of learning what was going on and freeing the Emperor, but I also had to play the stages again of the already completed Master I chose with the power of Foresight in what was called a Reality Run. As you can foresee, my drive to keep playing ceased.

In-game progression is still presented as a map where you choose a path, giving the roguelike approach, where you will have to choose between options like earning money to spend in a store or acquiring additional abilities. It creates additional replayability beyond the different schools, as your choices will differ from those made available on your chosen path. At the end of the map, you will have a boss fight to complete, where the boss will come with multiple abilities, putting your foresight to the test.

The combat in Forestrike is presented on a two-dimensional field in pixel art, which is nice. Everything else, such as the story presentation, is presented in beautiful, Asian-inspired watercolour stills. I did wish the pixel art to be changed to match the watercolour style, but that was just a dream.

Combat sounds are clean and crisp, with each action identifiable. In the demo, the only other identifiable audio was the music, which is influenced by Asian styles and pairs perfectly with the game’s theme. The full release of Forestike has made ambient sounds more prevalent, adding to the realism and making the world more alive.

Forestike is a good game, but I did not foresee the high level of patience and commitment required to complete it. Though I dream of a missed opportunity in visuals, the sound design was on point.

With a mountain of gameplay options to unpack with the Forestriker ability, Forestrike is fun, but you need to weigh up if the heightened difficulty and convoluted story are going to be too frustrating for you, as it was for me.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove