Recent reviews by Øni

Don't purchase this game, period.
At the time of writing Foregone is 4,19€, and my money were completely wasted on this product; the reasons are as follows:

• Lack of identity
  
• Horrible design
  
• Unexplained systems
  
• Frustrating gameplay

Foregone is heavily inspired by Dead Cells, all from the enemy design, weapon system, artstyle, to the story being told in the background through enviroments. Unlike Dead Cells however, this game is put together with the same care and precision of a kamikaze plane in an antique shop.
The enemies are all carbon copies from Dead Cells, but their placements have no thought put behind them at all when it comes to the lens of Foregone's mechanics; enemy placements should complement the game's mechanics and utilize the levels to their full potential, but in Foregone the enemies are placed in places that actively strive against the mechanics of the game. Enemies on walls and ceilings are out of reach with your ranged weapon because the auto aim has an incredibly low angle of detection, and it simply can't fire upwards, often you have to jump to be in the same elevation in order to hit anything, and the further into the game you get this becomes harder and harder due to a more heavy use of enviromental hazards, and often enough your only choice is to hit enemies with your melee weapon anyway because of the non-functioning auto aim feature. Your combat capabilities in the air are however extremely limited due to one single unique aerial attack that has a long windup and animation.
You can't chain dodgerolls as the dodge has an internal cooldown that the game doesn't tell you about, yet machine gun enemies are placed at the end of long hallways where you have to eat at least a few bullets. There's enemy collision that doesn't cause damage, but their hurtboxes are so extended that you're more often than not knocked off edges since they push you out of their space, so if you're in a platforming section where enemies fire at you and there's a single fat enemy on a small platform - then you can't get past it as you'll be pushed off the edge without being able to line up a jump.

You have five melee weapons and four ranged weapons, and their impact on your playstyle doesn't matter in the slightest due to their dps decrepency being so large, so you're always better off just upgrading the newest weapon with the highest base damage. Upgrading itself isn't explained in the slightest, so trying to decipher what an upgrade actually will do for the item is up to trial and error, and even what some stats such as 'power' does is a mystery. Just like in Dead Cells you have additional item effects such as increased damage to a poisoned enemy, or a certain percent chance to attatch a bomb to your target. The issue with this system however is that no actual synergies exist. I played up to the 9:th area of the 12 available, and there was neither a reason nor enough leniency to upgrade my skill tree in order to unlock conditional ways of doing specific debuffs. You're heavily encouraged to grind due to having set costs for upgrading items, without it being rare in the slightest, and in order to change your menial synergy you need to beat a speedrun version of a level you've already beaten in order to unlock a merchan that can reroll your modifiers for a cost, and you also get a single item at the end of this challenge level. There is still no reason what so ever to min/max these items as you have to grind to such an extent in order to achieve the synergies you want that you'll just unlock more equipment with better base stats anyway. Even if you were to grind your heart out in order to get all skilltree upgrades so you at least have the opportunity to utilize the synergies, you still can't upgrade a skill before you've found their specific upgrade item that's gated at some point in one of the twelve levels. For nine levels the system didn't matter in the slightest and I hadn't died once, up until enemy damage skyrocketed out of nowhere and the enemies decided to all stand inside each other, chaining their attacks at the same time with their non-telegraphed animations suddenly one shotting me.

Your healing is tied to the same Estus style healing everything in the shadow of Dark Souls has, but instead you only get one charge that refills when you damage enemies; emphasizing aggression and pushing on in order to live. Except that just killing enemies drop healing orbs that immediately heal you, there's skilltree upgrades that give you leech that activates when you kill something, and except for a single enemy type nothing in the game can actually follow you if you run past them, so there's no pressure for survival at all.
You still have your bonfire system where you get checkpoints at certain intervals in the levels, except that instead of having the option to upgrade your gear or skilltree, instead it's a teleporter to the hub zone which contains four npcs and nothing else. You will return to the hub zone literally every time you hit a check point as you'll always have enough money for at least some upgrades, and enemies drop loot constantly that you can sell.

The bosses are unchallenging, and they all reach their phase two at around 60-75% HP, at which point the entire fight stays the exact same without evolving at all - turning the entire ordeal into a painful slog. All bosses have about three moves that they repeat in the same pattern ad infinitum, and during their phase two they either get upgrades to their existing moves, or get one or two new ones.

The artstyle is made from 3D models being pushed through a pixelart filter, where this worked in Dead Cells due to meticulous care and an eye for detail, in Foregone it looks like a cheap Photoshop plugin that wasn't calibrated properly. Still images may look appealing, but in movement it's jagged and unbelievably sloppy.

After the peak of Dark Souls' popularity it's sadly a fact of life that other games have to try to ape off every aspect of that game without understanding what made it work. Dark Souls' story is one told by context and world building, through the enemies you fight and the descriptions of items that help piece together the history of this dying world. Foregone has the character spit quippy or asinine dialogue whenever a new landmark is discovered. *Piles of hundreds upon hundreds of corpses lies strewn out in a courtyard* "There are so many bodies after the war."
After defeating the risen, skeletal remains of an undead king "I was never much for kings." In addition to Steven Universe levels of dialogue there are also of course cryptic npcs that spew random detatched sentences towards you in hope of sounding mysterious, except instead of it being dozens of well crafted, dynamic characters with wants, needs, and goals, instead it's just four merchants that adds nothing. There's also exposition delivered through random text documents strewn across the world that doesn't add anything to the experience.

My intent was to 100% this game in order to review it as fairly and accurately as possible, but after eight hours of non-engaging gameplay, bullet sponge bosses, seemingly random enemy placements, incomprehensible systems and menus, asinine dialogue, buggy AI, leap of faith trap placements, and ugly artsyle; it was enough to break me.

Not a single part of me can recommend anything about this game.

Fantastic fighting game for people of any skill level. If you're into fighting games but you're having a hard time getting friends into it, get this game.
In under an hour everyone playing has reached intentionality.

A more accurate title should be Golf With Your "Friends". Turn on collision and quickly start to see how your closest friends are more fit to be dead.

It's ok.