F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch Reviews

Game is pretty good and fun, the weapons are cool, movement is fluid and responsive, the environment is amazing, the setting is interesting. Overall I do recommend this game. There's only a couple things that detract from this experience for me. Combat ranges from good to frustrating. The enemies feel like they were not really designed for this game especially the further in you get. The game goes from being a metroidvania to being partially beat-em-up, to being a sweaty beat-em-up, as enemies start to demand higher combos and, maybe, deeper understanding of the combat mechanics. I say "maybe" because it feels like the game thinks you have all the tools to handle the enemies, but either it isn't clear to me or there is something actually missing for that to be the case. You can sweat it out and get through the combat, but it often feels more frustrating than it needs to be. I think it would be more enjoyable if the enemies lightened up a little bit because it seems a little imbalanced for an enjoyable experience. There are some sub-weapons you can get throughout the game, however these weapons use the same resource as your health flask. Despite how cool the sub-weapons seem to be, I pretty much never used them. I often felt like I needed the health flask a lot more than the sub-weapons because combat is that kind of problem. You're effectively unable to use them because the combat demands healing more than parrying attacks or shooting rockets. I don't really understand why these would be on the same resource as the flask anyway. I think parrying doesn't even really need a resource. Parrying felt situational and unreliable anyway and if it was somehow game breaking enough to require a limitation, I certainly could not discover that due to the resource limits and the combat needing healing. I think a fix would be to make each one have their own resource so you at least cycle through them throughout combat rather than one and one. This way combat would feel like you have more options to try, be more dynamic, and even be less frustrating.

Solid Metroidvania all around, good gameplay, excellent aesthetics, great tunes, interesting world, and plenty of goodies to find. My only issues were some misplaced subtitles, some curious choices for scene transitions, and a handful of cases where the environment loaded in a bit slow during some swift travel between neighboring areas, aka no real issues leading to even more of a pleasant couple of hours.

Spongy enemies, combat gets too tedious halfway through the game when there are more red enemies. I mostly just ended up throwing them away with the grab and running past them unless it's a unskippable fight.

Nice game with normal progressive difficulty. Simple story nice graphics not very nice music. Some times lags to much.

Metroidvania with great 3-D graphics, servicable soundtrack (ambiance, little in terms of melody); very obvious Chinese translation; and a hero who's "getting too old for this shit". It's fine. The gameplay between the three weapons works against one or two enemies, but the DASH is not a DODGE and 3+ enemies = a bad time. Parry is finicky and imprecise. Combat and controls (especially when in the water) are often frustrating. All that and yet this isn't enough for me to stop playing, and the world itself is fun to explore and learn about. I haven't yet finished the game, but I feel I'm probably 80% through the story and needed to vent about the stiff controls. In a way, it reminds me a lot of the GBA Mega Man Zero, albiet without the tight controls and memorable soundtrack.

The game was good, until what should have been one of the more easier tasks in the game became such a burden, which was the Master training by far! The combat input animations are absolutely terrible when it comes to switching weapons mid attack! This alone ruined this game completely for me! A big NO!!!! The devs should be ashamed of themselves for this garbage nonsense!!!!

Some glitches and crashes here and there, sometimes it's annoying to navigate trough the map but in general it was pretty fun. Like a mix of hollow knight and celeste in my opinion I like the refrences and the artwork

After completing Forged Shadow Torch City on PS5, I played it again on PC for another 16 hours. I highly recommend this game—it boasts stunning visuals, smooth combat, and is a rare high-quality Metroidvania title. I really hope for a sequel and can't wait to see more!

Biggest drawbacks, and they are HUGE for me. Exploring is a big NO, the map layouts and shortcuts are just terrible. The movment is poor, the game feels like it eats alot of my inputs, and therefor makes to many of the attacks from enemies not possible to be avoided. The game migth be focused around combos for attacks, but everything more than a 3 attack combo is never happening in combat against any enemy that would not judt die long before the combo is finished.

If you liked the demo, don't buy the entire game yet. At least wait for a discount. The demo was good but a few hours into the full game it changes noticeably and just starts to be borderline annoying. Especially the dash system — you need exact time and precision to get it right, sometimes 10 times in a row. At 33% completion of the main plot (well, let's call it a plot) I stopped having fun completely and quit.