Skyforge

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1-3 Co-Op (Online), 20 Team-Based Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Skyforge is an online-only multiplayer-focused free-to-play Action-RPG released on multiple platforms in 2017 and brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2021. The game takes place in the fantasy/sci-fi world of Aelion, where players take the role of a recently-killed warrior resurrected as an immortal who fights hordes of invading creatures.

The presentation here is an absolute mess, to the point where it heavily distracts from the gameplay. The framerates jump wildly between 20-40FPS with frequent shuddering, the resolution is abysmally low, there’s plenty of aliasing, there’s texture pop-in… this game is an absolute eyesore. Yet the sound is even worse, with the decent orchestral soundtrack and lacking voice acting frequently interrupted by horrible shuddering as well, with the sound often cutting out or grinding in an abrasive manner that makes me instinctively reach for the home button to exit the game.

Despite the absolutely atrocious sound and performance issues, this game wants you to dedicate a massive 21.8GB of space on your Nintendo Switch to play it. Suffice it to say, that space is not being put to good use here.

I might bear through this game’s terrible visuals and audio flaws if the gameplay made it worth my while, but this gameplay is unfortunately mediocre at best. Combat doesn’t feel especially great, and in fact players feel largely detached from the action, with attacks often automatically aiming at enemies and melee attacks connecting even when enemies are nowhere near you.

In short, this very much seems to be a bad port of a mediocre game. Players wanting to fight alongside friends online in a free-to-play Action-RPG on Nintendo Switch are far better off sticking with Warframe, which looks better, plays better, and suffers none of the problems that this game does. Don’t waste your time with this mess.

tl;dr – Skyforge is a free-to-play online-only Action-RPG where players play as resurrected immortals fighting hordes of invading creatures. Unfortunately, the action is mediocre, and it’s made worse by a terrible port to Nintendo Switch with eye-wateringly bad graphics and horrendously broken sound. Even free is too much to pay for this game.

Grade: D+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Winner:

Worst Port/Remake – While not quite as major or noteworthy as some of the other ports on this list, Skyforge has the distinction of being outright broken on the Nintendo Switch, to the point of being almost unplayable. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to release the game in this state, with framerates that fluctuate wildly, sound that cuts in and out, and the game overall feeling like a buggy mess? And then of course, there’s the massive 21.8GB file size, making you wonder just what the heck all that file space is being used for. Don’t waste your limited memory card space for this trash. If you need to play this, play it on another platform.

Runner-Up: Worst Microtransactions, The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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