I tend to prefer exploration focused action adventure platformers, aka metroidvanias, to be about the exploration. By now we’ve seen so many games of this type emphasizing one or several building blocks of the genre that there’s plenty of choice for everyone. F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch, the first major release by the Chinese-based TiGames, is a metroidvania focusing on action, story and somewhat realistic architecture. So in a way it works like a mix of Shadow Complex and Guacamelee! and does a good job at it.
At its core, F.I.S.T. has everything you’d expect from a brawler metroidvania. It has incredibly fun movement mechanics so the world exploration is fun, with infinite wall jumping, dashing, double jumps and other unlockable skills, with most of the fun basics becoming available almost from the very beginning. It has a fun arsenal of melee moves and skills that gets expanded with new weapon types and more combo possibilities. You can also switch weapons on the fly, juggle enemies in the air and later even unlock a parry skill. There are also skills and upgrades that you can improve or buy as all defeated enemies drop money, which can also be found in containers all around the map. Which you, as always for the genre, will not always be able to explore in full on the first go, as you will be lacking skills. However, if you’re really good with the skills you already have, you can get some unlocks early and avoid the later backtracking. The only thing, somewhat common for modern metroidvanias, that is missing here is a new game plus mode, which is a bit of a shame.
All that said, while the game certainly has all that, and also looks pretty good, it doesn’t always know how to use its resources right. Combat, for all of its moves and skills, often feels sluggish and either tedious, when fighting normal enemies, or way too chaotic when fighting some bosses. There’s a noticeable inconsistency in input latency, probably also tied to the general performance issues this game has. Though, even ignoring that, the “training” that you can go through to unlock more moves and collectibles, feels completely pointless, as you won’t be pulling those cool combos in the actual gameplay – simpler enemies either die fast or are easier to deal with more consistent simpler combos, while bosses cannot be juggled at all. And some can block or even parry your attacks, with no clear tell or pattern, which throws your combo off and can nullify your special attacks, that have a cost to them to pull off.
The story and the world also feel inconsistent and at times rather poor. Maybe some of the story issues can be written off as awkward translation (and it does sound literal and weird more often than not), but even without that, I can’t see it being interesting either way. It’s a pretty simple tale with stock characters either way, it’s just that the characters are all anthropomorphic animals. Not all of whom even look right, which is also a thing – visually the game can be stunning, but at times it’s a poor clash of styles. Not helped by the usual Unreal Engine 4 issues with sprawling interconnected worlds, like stutters (especially with Ray Tracing), texture pop-in and bland late 2000s look of more metallic areas. The music is often a miss too, with the very first location track being the worst offender and the best example of the issue – it’s not a bad track, but it’s short, repetitive and it soon becomes annoying.
Even the exploration and platforming are uneven. For story reasons, for example, the game can suddenly teleport you away from the area a few percent before you fully cover it, so you’d have to specifically backtrack to it to get those last parts of the map. And this happens a few times. Some of the platforming challenges are a bit obnoxious and the difficulty of platforming in general is rather uneven. There are a couple of more puzzle-centric areas and those are almost never good, as the puzzle itself isn’t difficult, but the execution can sometimes be annoying to do. Luckily, there’s genuine variety in mechanical focus from location to location, so it’s rare that you’d get annoyed for too long.
I enjoyed a lot of my time with F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch but most definitely not all of it. It’s also worth noting that at the moment of my playthrough I had to occasionally go to the main menu and reloading the save to stop the game from horribly lagging, which might be an issue with ray tracing in one of the areas. But this wasn’t the reason for plenty of the annoyances I had with the game. If you’re in a mood for a metroidvania with a melee action focus, but also really fun movement and you don’t mind a rather poor story that’s mostly unskippable getting in the way from time to time F.I.S.T. is a cool game to check. It’s not great, but there’s enjoyment to be had out of it.