The Chinese developer has received strong support from Sony in recent years through Sony Asia’s China Hero Project to support the independent developer in China and while the most interesting projects of this program continue to be released, we get one of the first projects supported which is the Metroidvania game FIST: Forged In Shadow Torch is the TiGames development team’s first project.
The story of the game revolves around a world in which a war took place between the army of robots and animals of human form or “Fortisons” as the game calls them. The Fortunes lost the war and the army of robots took control of the city of Torch City, which became of an industrial character. The events take place after the end of the war, while the rabbit “ Rayton tries to save his friend from prison, and events follow, when Rayton discovers that his former colleague “Cicero” is the leader of the army of robots. Surprises with survival are interesting but fail to do so, the events are very predictable and nothing will surprise you here.
The technical level of the game is uneven which is annoying in the F.I.S.T. world. Full of details, especially in the background of the screen, and the game will look good on a technical level at times, and at other times the details will appear blurry for some elements. In this experience, you will move a lot between screens and you will find that the details of the following screen appear gradually and late when talking about the PlayStation 4 version that we made By reviewing the game on it, and the level of animation is modest, whether during gameplay or during cinematic clips, there is also an exaggeration in the special effects during the fight in a way that may obstruct the vision and prevent you from realizing the opponent’s attempts to attack. On the audio level, the game offers a good set of tunes that you will listen to in some confrontations Bosses and a few other occasions.
Speaking of game style, F.I.S.T. It offers the expected experience from Metroidvania games. The gameplay is simple and your abilities are limited in the beginning, with you getting many new abilities and tools as you progress in the experience, which adds additional depth to the fighting style in addition to enabling you to return to previous areas to overcome a previous obstacle and reach your next goal, the idea of the game It revolves around the mechanized hand that you own, which you will gain two additional abilities for as you get a number of side items, each of which plays a special role in the battles.
The battles remain interesting as a result of the very large diversity of their types. As you progress in the experience, you will face enemies with new abilities, as you will face some repetitive enemies, but with more powerful versions of the previous versions, and the strategy that you will need to defeat each type is different from the other, and some of them may be easier to try a certain ability of your hand The mechanism to defeat it, which encourages you to switch between your equipment, and the game also offers many options of the following strikes or combos in which you can mix between the capabilities of the robotic hand. Or Parry, it is activated by moving towards the opponent or away from him in the moment before his attack instead of allocating a button for this feature, which made it impractical when applying. Although many enemies can be defeated without this feature, it becomes necessary when facing some of the more powerful types, especially the bosses. It is better to simply provide a special button for this feature.
Boss encounters are many and varied in their ideas and you will face bosses of all shapes and sizes, which keeps things exciting, outside the battles and boss confrontations you will move between many areas and in each area you will face a number of challenges jumping between platforms and a number of simple puzzles as well, and each area will present puzzles and challenges based on The nature of the region itself, and we found these challenges very entertaining, as many of them require accuracy and speed in reaction, but it is not incapacitating at the same time. The core content of the game is excellent and very satisfying, in addition to its excellent side content. Behind these ramifications, you will find many secrets and treasures, in addition to the ability to develop some of your tools, and there are a number of optional boss encounters that you will reach, and the beautiful thing is that these confrontations are also diverse and present the required challenge.
You can finish the experience in 13 to 14 hours if you focus on the main content. From our side, we spent about 18 hours and finished the game with a 77% score, referring to the many secrets and areas we still have to explore, FIST: Forged In Shadow Torch provides an excellent experience And satisfying for fans of Metroidvania games, it keeps the battles varied and full of challenges with entertaining challenges and puzzles in addition to the excellent content, the game may suffer from some unsuccessful decisions, but it is an excellent start as the first games of the development team.
This game was revised for the PlayStation 4.