Forestrike Review: You trained me to be an amazing fighter

It took me a long time to get halfway fit Forstrike. action martial arts game, from He was Skeleton Crew developerhas a unique twist in that it allows you to see what will happen in most battles and then practice your strategy accordingly. It turns the combat process into a kind of puzzle game, but it still requires quick reflexes and precise decision-making to be successful. It has succeeded in turning me into a powerful fighter, at least in the world of pixelated video games.

You play as a martial arts student named Yu, who, despite being relatively green, is tasked with ridding his homeland of an evil empire. To do this, you mostly have to travel across the landscape and beat up bad guys. Forstrike This game has a roguelite structure, which means that the levels and scenarios change slightly each time you play, and you will lose a lot. But that loss is also inherent in the premise: this is a game about constant learning. Along the way, you are accompanied by several martial arts masters who will teach you new techniques to help you on your mission.

Central to all of this is the ability known as insight. Basically, this allows you to preview the battle before getting into the real battle. It’s like training. You can see how things will go and practice your strategy in advance. Battles in Forstrike It’s fast, usually only lasting a few seconds, but like a great martial arts movie, it involves a carefully coordinated series of moves. Foresight lets you know exactly how you want to proceed before you actually get into danger.

It doesn’t mean that Forstrike easy. Early on, I was getting kicked on a regular basis. Even when you know exactly when to dodge, pick up a weapon, or use a slow but powerful kick, it’s still a challenge to pull it off when it counts, no matter how much you train. The game also constantly presents you with different challenges; Sometimes you can only use Insight a limited number of times in battle, and other times you can’t at all.

Insight is not a crutch to make the game less challenging, but more of a tool to hone your skills. It’s like throwing some warm-up shots before the actual basketball game. These challenges help keep the game fresh even though many of the battles may be somewhat similar. The same goes for its structure, which allows you to regularly unlock new skills for each round, and eventually meet new martial arts masters who will teach you new techniques, giving you more options.

Eventually, things started to click. And when you finally manage to make a flawless run through a large group of enemies, that’s what it feels like amazingas if you were truly in a classic action movie, pulling the strings. But those few seconds of perfection take a lot of practice.

_{Forstrike Available now on Steam, and coming soon to Nintendo Switch.}