FORCED: Slightly Better Edition

My honest reaction when I first loaded FORCED was: this looks like a budget Diablo with arena rooms. Twenty minutes in, I was yelling at a glowing orb while my teammate got crowd-controlled to death and we both blamed each other. That is, more or less, the game's entire pitch, and it works. FORCED is a top-down arena action RPG built around 1-4 player co-op, spread across 25 trials split into five regions, with five boss encounters waiting at the end of each. You pick one of four weapon classes before every run: the Storm Bow handles long-range pressure, the Volcanic Hammer is your crowd-control sledge, the Spirit Knives are fast hit-and-run, and the Frost Shield is the tank-support option. No two players in a team can run the same class, which forces genuine role discussion before each arena. Each weapon has 16 unlockable abilities, split between active and passive slots, and you earn gems per trial to unlock them. Three gems are on the table every stage: one for completion, one for a specific in-trial challenge, one for a time trial. That structure gives you replay incentive beyond just clearing content, which is about the strongest thing the progression system does. The real mechanical hook is Balfus, your orb-shaped spirit companion who is simultaneously your guide, your puzzle tool, and the source of most team arguments. Calling Balfus to your position routes him through the environment in a straight line, and positioning him over shrines or pedestals triggers effects like healing circles, stun blasts, or spawner destruction. Managing that routing while enemy waves are actively pressuring you is where the game earns its reputation for being genuinely demanding. The communication requirement is real: two people trying to bounce Balfus between themselves while a boss throws minions is legitimately chaotic and, when it clicks, satisfying in a way that purely combat-focused co-op games rarely are. The Mark Combat System adds another layer, where basic attacks apply marks to enemies that your allies can then detonate with their special moves, rewarding teams that coordinate their ability timing rather than just button-mashing independently. That said, the rough edges are hard to ignore. The solo experience is widely and correctly flagged as a steep uphill fight. Difficulty scaling with player count exists, but the game's design logic is built for teams, and playing alone makes that feel like an afterthought rather than a considered mode. The level variety also starts to thin around the midpoint: arena layouts change, but the objectives (kill the things, move the orb over the thing, survive the timer) cycle through their templates quickly enough that fatigue sets in before the credits. Visually, nothing here is going to impress anyone, and the music and dialogue do their job and nothing more. A framerate dip warning on the console versions applies less to the PC build, but performance is worth watching on older hardware. Controller setup on PC with multiple players has historically caused headaches per community reports, so do your peripheral homework before assuming local four-player just works out of the box. Bottom line for the Scout Team's typical reader: FORCED is not a shooter, and I'll be upfront that arena action RPGs are not my native territory. But the co-op tension here is the kind of thing I respect regardless of genre. It scratches a specific itch, the one for a game where you and two friends actually need each other or you lose, rather than a game where co-op just means everyone hits the same enemies simultaneously. If you have two or three people who will commit to the communication overhead, there is a genuinely rewarding experience in these arenas. If your squad needs convincing or you are even slightly likely to run this solo, your time is better spent elsewhere.

Fred · Scout Team

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