Foregone review

Foregone is set years after a devastating war that left the city of Calagan besieged by an all-corrupting force known as the Harrow. As the city’s strongest super-soldier, players are tasked to investigate the Harrow’s origins and prevent its reanimated minions from destroying the world you’ve sworn to protect.

Foregone is a fast-paced 2D action-platformer mixed with a bit of Dark Souls and looting elements. As you kill around enemies, they’ll drop various gear (weapons, armors, rings, emblems) which can be picked up and equipped. Each piece of equipment has its own stats; some of which will be beneficial; others will be underpowered. The underpowered junk can be sold back for some extra dough. Melee weapons vary from the simple dagger to double-handed weaponry. Often times you need to make a choice between DPS (damage per second) and weapon attack speed.

The protagonist has two ways to defend herself. She can use melee attacks with various melee weapons such as swords. In order to give yourself a bit of breathing room, you can also use firearms and bows to attack at long range, which comes useful against weapons with their own firearms. She also has a vital dodge ability which can mean the difference between life and death.

She also has a few magic tricks up her sleeve. Early on, you are awarded two skills: the Dash attack and a recovering skill. Both of have their own magic meter. The Dash attack can be used once while the recover skill can be either used briefly or for a longer period of time; well until the meter is empty. As you kill enemies, the meters progressively recovers. As you progress through the various levels, you’ll also find and unlock additional skills.

The Dark Souls aspect of it comes from the enemy difficulty. While players a reasonably huge health bar, the bigger the enemies, the more damage they can do thus resulting in a quick death. Players will need to adapt a move like a butterfly, sting like a bee mentality in order to progress; especially against bosses. Speaking of which bosses are fun and challenging battles that will require patience.

Each area uncovered will have a teleport device that allows you to teleport back to the commander outpost. And also allows you to quickly travel back to the last area you were after death. Dying is the game’s main problem. After a death, you’re thrown back to the start of the game and there are no checkpoints so if you don’t reach the next area and its teleport device, then you have to restart the whole area over. Thankfully, any doors you’ve opened will remain as such so you can zip right by and avoid enemies if you want. Also dying means you lose your hard-earned money and orbs. You can take a chance to get half of it back when talking to the ferryman back at the commander outpost or travel back to your death spot and recuperate it all.

Orbs can be used at the outpost to upgrade your various skills; whether it be attacks or special skills such as health recovery or dash attack (or any obtainable skills). What’s interesting here is that your orbs are never lost. If you feel like you’ve made the wrong upgrade choice, you can always get a refund; however don’t expect to get all your orbs back as the house takes a cut as they say and when asking for a refund, you’ll get half the orbs you’ve paid for a certain upgrade.

Foregone features beautiful pixelated visuals; very colorful where each area is uniquely designed to stand out from one another and avoid navigation tediousness. The game features a decent enemy variety, however, they sometimes repeat the same enemies with a different color pattern; which also makes them stronger and tougher to kill. The soundtrack is an interesting score with a bit of gothic vibe, other a bit more creepy tone.

Foregone is one of the best 2D platformers I’ve had the privilege of reviewing this year. But nothing is perfect; the lack of checkpoints between terminals can prove frustrating and sometimes the game feels relentless. However, the upgrade system, combat, boss battles make this game worth every minute of it. I definitely recommend this one.