Forspoken: A Beginner's Guide to Frey's Journey Through Athia

By Nham Vu · Updated July 2026

Forspoken is a 2023 action RPG developed by Luminous Productions and published by Square Enix, built on the same Luminous Engine that powered Final Fantasy XV. You play as Frey Holland, a young woman pulled out of New York and dropped into the cursed land of Athia, where a talking bracelet named Cuff becomes her only real ally.

I put a lot of hours into this one around launch, and it's a game people either bounce off in the first hour or end up quietly enjoying for the traversal alone. This guide walks through what actually matters when you start, how the magic system evolves, and where the game earns its reputation, good and bad.

What to Do First in Forspoken?

The first real priority in Forspoken is learning to move before worrying about combat. The parkour and magic-fueled traversal are the mechanical backbone of the whole game, and the opening hours deliberately hold back your best tools to teach the basics in Cipal, the main hub city.

In practice, new players rush toward the story and skip the tutorial prompts for stamina management and terrain reading. That's a mistake. Spend a few extra minutes in the early open areas practicing wall runs, sprints, and the vertical traversal spell before you push into the first major questline, because Athia's regions get much more vertical fast.

• Talk to Cuff and complete the tutorial prompts for movement
• Explore Cipal fully before leaving for the first main quest
• Check the Support Skills menu early, since several passive upgrades are easy to miss
• Save crafting materials rather than spending them on the first tier of gear

How Do You Use Burrow in Forspoken?

Burrow is one of Frey's core traversal spells and it lets her tunnel briefly underground to close distance or dodge incoming attacks. You unlock it as part of the natural magic progression, and it becomes one of the more useful mobility options once you're comfortable chaining it with sprinting and jumping.

What trips up new players is trying to use Burrow purely as an escape button. It works far better as a positioning tool in fights, letting you slip behind a group of enemies or reposition mid-combo without breaking your attack rhythm. The best players I've seen treat it like a dash with a hitbox, not just a panic move.

What Platforms Is Forspoken Available On?

Forspoken originally launched on PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows in January 2023, with no last-gen console version. That's a notable design choice, since the game leans on fast SSD streaming to keep its open world loading seamlessly during high-speed traversal.

The PC version, which released alongside the PS5 build, needs a reasonably strong rig to hit stable frame rates at higher settings, particularly with ray tracing enabled. If you're deciding where to play, the PS5 version benefits from tighter optimization out of the box, while PC gives you resolution and frame rate flexibility if your hardware can handle it.

Is Forspoken Worth Playing? What Do Reviews and Metacritic Say?

Forspoken landed as a mixed release, with review scores generally sitting in the middle of the pack rather than at either extreme. Most critiques centered on the dialogue and pacing in the opening chapters, not the combat or traversal systems, which were consistently the parts reviewers and players singled out as strong.

My own take lines up with that split. The first few hours are rough because the writing hasn't found its footing and the world feels sparse. Once the magic tree opens up around the midgame and you're chaining earth, fire, and later elemental spells together, the combat becomes genuinely satisfying in a way a lot of action RPGs never quite reach.

Who Are the Main Characters in Forspoken?

Frey Holland is the protagonist, a New Yorker with a rough past who gets pulled into Athia through a magical cloak. Cuff, the sentient bracelet that fuses to her arm, provides most of the game's humor and exposition, acting as both narrator and combat assistant.

The land of Athia itself is ruled over by four Tantas, matriarchal figures who have each been corrupted by the Break, a plague-like force twisting the world. The score, composed by Bear McCreary, underlines a lot of the emotional beats between Frey and these characters, and it's one of the more overlooked strengths of the production.

What Are the Best Beginner Tips for Forspoken?

The most important beginner habit in Forspoken is rotating your spell types instead of spamming a single favorite attack. Enemies have resistances and weaknesses tied to elemental damage, and sticking to one spell tree will make later fights noticeably harder than they need to be.

Beyond combat, side content in Athia is worth engaging with even if you're focused on the main story. Camps, chests, and the various collectibles scattered across the regions feed directly into crafting better gear, and skipping them tends to leave you underpowered against the tougher story bosses.

• Rotate between earth, fire, and later elemental spells rather than favoring one
• Upgrade Support Skills alongside attack spells, not after
• Clear nearby camps before fast traveling past a region
• Craft gear upgrades as soon as you have enough materials instead of hoarding them
• Use Surge and other burst spells to break enemy stagger gauges faster