Distributor provided a review copy.
Forestrike is a game about patience, planning, and frustration. Like other indie titles looking to emulate the experience of real kung-fu without the years of training, it's an odd mix of films and roguelike elements that somehow work together even when they shouldn't.
It's not a perfect game, but it is occasionally a great one, especially once you get into the very deliberate rhythm of things. If you don't, well, chances are you might just hate it instead.
The setup is as straightforward as any Shaw Brothers film. Our hero is Yu, a disciple of the order of Forestrike, a group of monks who can "see" the endless possibilities of how fights will play out through meditation. In their mind, they can practice, fail, and triumph through any encounter before it even begins.
When the quest begins, Yu sets out to save the Emperor from a threat growing within his palace. But the way to even reach his ruler proves nearly impossible, and Yu must first face trials against warring generals and turncoats who seek to destroy the land for their own benefit.
Forestrike is a surprisingly talky game, and much of the first hours are spent going through tedious dialog and backstory that doesn't make an impact. The writing isn't bad, but it's nowhere near as efficient or memorable as it needs to be, especially considering the films it tries so hard to emulate. After some hours, I ended up skipping most of the extraneous dialog entirely, which is a shame, as flavor text can immensely help with setting a tone and place for a game. It just doesn't do that here.
Once Forestrike gets going, however, it's a lot harder to put down. The gameplay loop is deeply compelling and easily understood, even as the game consistently ramps up the difficulty by introducing different enemy types and level variations to the mix.
At first, I went in expecting a completely different kind of experience. I wanted something more traditional and threw myself into a fight thinking it was akin to an arcade brawler. It wasn't long before I got pummeled into oblivion and sent packing to square one.
From there on out, Forestrike became like the montage of a Kung-Fu movie where the hero learns through hardship. Failure after failure, I got slightly better in dodging, blocking, and throwing a punch when needed and not a moment sooner. To this day, a month later, I still lose focus and break my anticipation. But that's part of the process. It takes a long time to get really good at these things.
At first, I grew increasingly annoyed at how limited your moveset and skills are, even as you progress through the game. Blocks and dodges are worth their weight in gold, which initially feels counterintuitive considering how martial arts work in reality. It's that never-ending riddle of how much game is enough and how much realism is too much. Other titles, like Sifu, never quite nail it, and occasionally Forestrike stumbles as well.
But repetition is the key, and as with titles like Tetris, you work with what you get. Once that clicks, so does the rest of Forestrike. Each level is a contained encounter, so all you need to do is worry about that immediate moment. Enemies are visually distinct with great color coding and animation, so that learning their tricks becomes a part of the puzzle. Rarely did I encounter scenarios where the environment hid cheap tricks or surprises that ended in death.
The resulting experience is like experiencing the entirety of training and mastering a skill over and over again, only to move on to the next encounter and starting from scratch. It builds a weird sense of humility. It made me want to do better. That's a hard thing to get right, especially in a game.
I don't think Forestrike is for everyone, but for those willing to go with the deliberate pacing and gameplay mechanics, it will prove an immensely rewarding experience. Think of it more as a puzzle game than the action-roguelike it sells itself as, and you'll have more fun. Once the core mechanics feel like second nature, you can experiment more with the other genre influences.
It isn't perfect, but none of us are. Like any great experience, it gets better the more you spend time with it. For a game, there is no better compliment.
