New story-heavy DLC for the critically divisive Forspoken is now available, serving as a prequel to the events of the base game that sees the game's main character, witch-to-be, Frey, travelling back in time to attempt to locate the exact point of the "Break" to try and save Athia once again, only from a different angle.

In the Forspoken: In Tanta We Trust story DLC, players will battle alongside Tanta Cinta and unlock new combat strategies to coordinate devastating attack combos against the invading Rheddig forces. Scale to new heights in unique vertically designed environments with Frey’s honed magic-enhanced parkour skills.

Despite our damning score of 4/10, the game's Metacritic average sits at 64, suggesting many out there found value within it. This new DLC promises new magic, a new setting and a more fleshed-out story around the game's main character, Frey Holland, which might serve as a bit of a saving grace, but we're not so sure.

Still, it's available now for PC and PS5, though you need the base game in order to play.

Square Enix and Luminous Productions' witch-leaning fish-out-of-water tale, Forspoken, is soon to be set loose upon the masses, but we argue there might be better ways to pass the time as this is a mostly vacuous, empty gaming experience with little to redeem it.

Here's a snippet:

It’s a harsh intro, but stacked against the game’s own stellarly awkward opening sequence it doesn’t feel out of place. We kick things off as Frey in the most on-the-nose of ways -- a troubled delinquent facing court for the umteenth time on the cusp of turning 21, she is a smart kid who can’t seem to cut a break. She’s also acutely aware of her Good Will Hunting condition and the nice judge lady gives her a break, sending her on her way with the sternest of warnings: stay out of trouble. Of course, trouble finds our saved cat and we get a glimpse of all the reasons Frey needs an immediate ‘out’ of her situation. Enter the rabbit hole, not so subtly explored when we get some background on our soon-to-be-witch, who even has a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland in her abandoned apartment she’s clearly squatting in.

At this point you could make it a true Daily Double and just guess your way to the game’s eventual kick off point, and you’d probably pull ahead of all the other contestants...

Click here for our full Forspoken review.

DirectStorage is a new bit of DirectX PC tech that will improve load times for PC games when installed on a fast NVMe SSD - basically bringing PS5-style one or two-second loading times. Square Enix's Forspoken, which is out on January 26, is the first game to support it. Being cutting-edge tech also means you'll need a beast of a PC to play the game.

The recommended specs below, for playing the game in 1440p at 30fps, requires an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU in addition to 24GB of RAM and 150GB of SSD storage. It's over-the-top and a little strange because 30fps performance for playing a game on PC is not something anyone wants, especially when they've got an RTX 3070 or 6700 XT.

Crank things up to Ultra and 4K 60fps and you'll need a Radeon RX 6800 XT or an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080. This is even more confusing and points to the game being optimised squarely for AMD hardware as the RTX 4080 is brand-new and delivers around double the performance of the 6800 XT.

On the plus side, the PC version supports ultrawide resolutions in addition to AMD FSR 2 upscaling, which hopefully will mean better performance than what's listed above. And it's exclusive to PS5 and PC, so it will no doubt feature some impressive visuals.

Here's a look at the game running on PC.

In Forspoken, the new open-world action-RPG from Square Enix, players arrive in a mystical land with newfound witch powers. Chief among these new powers is what developer Luminous Productions has aptly called "Magical Parkour" -- the ability to traverse the fantastical landscape at speed and with incredible agility.

Using her newfound magical abilities, Frey is able to nimbly traverse the treacherous terrain of Athia and explore her strange new surroundings. This Magic Parkour also comes in handy when she comes toe-to-toe with the multitude of enemies lurking in the corrupted landscape of the Break. Hit the ground running in this overview of the Magic Parkour system in Forspoken.

We actually took the game for a spin ourselves, coming away with these impressions and wrote in relation to Magical Parkour that it is "different and cool and fast".

Learn more about the traversal ability in the trailer above, and stay tuned for more on Forspoken as we magically parkour our way towards its release on PC and PS5 January 24, 2023.

"Magical parkour" might sound a bit naff, or even cringe, but at least it delivers on what it promises and it might just be reason enough alone to play Luminous Productions' open-world, magic-driven witch-starring jaunt, Forspoken. But there's plenty of other reason too.

Which we discovered in a recent hands-on session with the game, where we walked away tugging at its obvious influences, but not in a negative way.

Here's a snippet:

In Forspoken it’s a hip young New Yorker named, on-the-nosedly, Frey. Frey has been transported from the hustle and bustle of urban life to the barrens of Athia -- a magical world inhabited by flying creatures, floating Avatar-esque land masses and witches. In fact, now powered by a magical bracelet with a Giles-like voice and demeanour, Frey herself has become something of a witch and finds herself staring at this unfamiliar expanse armed only with the knowledge that she’s here to do something with those powers. Which is where you, the player, comes in and the game’s first main draw rears its head -- traversing to Downtown Athia, magic style.

Click here for our full Forspoken hands-on.