Forestrike follows Yu, a martial artist living in ancient times. Yu is part of the order of monks dedicated to the ancient art of foresight, a powerful technique that has allowed them to serve the emperor for centuries. Unfortunately, a foreigner known as The Admiral had managed to worm his way into the emperor's court and now seeks to dominate the land. Only Yu, with his skill in foresight, can fight his way through The Admiral's forces and rescue the emperor from his corrupt new "ally."

On the surface, Forestrike is very easy to play. You're thrown into a small 2D battle area and have to beat up a small group of enemies. The basic controls are simple, with a light attack, heavy attack, and dodge being most of what you can do. The trick is that before each fight starts, you can foresee what is going to happen in the battle. This allows you to play out the fight before it happens, and you can do that as many times as you want. The events in your foresight play out exactly as they do in the real fight. This means you're able to figure out exactly the right combination of moves and attacks that are necessary to defeat and shut down every foe before they can cause you harm. Once you've mentally mastered the fight, you can start the real fight. Win the fight, and you can move to the next stage; lose, and it's game over.

This is important because you only have three hit points by default, and enemies can trivially take you down very quickly if you mess up. Far from being a tank, you can barely afford to take a single hit. While there are ways to replenish health throughout the game, including the ability to find purple lotus flowers that allow you to revive after death, they're far from reliable. Practice also doesn't inherently make perfect, and you do need to execute your plans flawlessly to succeed, so having infinite retries isn't a shortcut to an easy game. Mess up and break the flow in combat, and your foresight is effectively worthless. There are also multiple "schools" of foresight you can master. Your initial Leaf school is about dodging and misdirection, while the Cold Eye school is far more offensive and tanky.

One of the most interesting elements of the game is that defense is tied to a limited resource. Dodging and blocking are tied to a specific color-coded pip. Dodging is blue, and blocking is yellow. By pressing the dodge button, you can avoid any attack, but it uses up one pip of your dodge resource, which doesn't return. Blocking is done automatically if you're hit while not attacking, but likewise, it uses up a resource. These resources are very limited, often leaving you with only one of each in a stage. Without them, your ability to avoid damage is almost nonexistent. At best, you can hit an enemy before they hit you, and any foe with defensive options will be able to counter you.

You can gain more of these as you progress in the game. Grab a weapon from the floor or an enemy, and you can use it to block until it breaks. Certain unlockable passive skills can replenish your dodge points if you complete certain objectives in combat. However, they remain a very tight resource and defense is frequently as much an offensive option as a defensive one. For example, dodging a charging enemy will cause them to go past you and hit a foe behind you, so wasting your dodge before the enemy charges would leave you unable to do a two-for-one takedown later.

You also have Focus, which is used to perform special abilities and attacks you unlock. These are often incredibly powerful abilities that can significantly change the tide of combat but must be used at the exact right time and place. Early on, I unlocked the ability to swap places with the closest enemy at will. It's immensely powerful if used in the right time, but use it at the wrong time, and I'd be surrounded by foes I couldn't handle. Most of these skills are tremendously useful but situational.

Enemies also function under these same rules. An enemy with a blue aura may dodge attacks, one with a yellow aura will block unless they are attacking themselves, and some enemies might teleport or have armor or otherwise have ways of limiting the damage they will take. The key to success is figuring out how to strip the enemy's defenses while making proper use of your own defenses. Have an enemy with a ranged weapon? Lure them into shooting the deadly armored foe across from them by taking down a weaker foe and then dodging the shot to your back. That takes down three foes in two actions.

Figuring out how to make enemies fight one another is also a key to success, especially in the boss fights, where you're frequently so outnumbered and outgunned that if you're not making the boss's minions do your work for you, you're likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of unavoidable actions coming toward you at once. You can't play the game like a standard action game because your defensive options are so limited and strict. While you can unlock permanent upgrades that make things a tad easier, you're always going to be on the back foot.

As you progress through the levels, you'll unlock rewards that can change how your character functions. You might gain the ability to nullify enemy weapon attacks or force the first enemy you hit to spin around in place and hit behind them. These moves can be further upgraded to enhance their function. Sometimes it's worth investing in a skill that replenishes lost HP, and other times, you're better off amplifying the damage you can do with a single attack to make it easier to get through enemy defenses. In true roguelike fashion, these are randomized, and you'll select from a variety of options when choosing your next stage, encouraging forethought and planning.

As a result, Forestrike feels less like an action game or beat-'em-up and more like a puzzle game. While some basic twitch skills are required to properly pull off some of the techniques, it's far more about knowing when and where to use your resources, which skill to use, and at which point. Since things like dodging and blocking are mostly automated, you can fight like an expert without needing pinpoint precision.

Once you do that, it feels amazingly good. It's deeply satisfying to pull off the exact right combination of moves and abilities to effortlessly dismantle a squadron of bad guys without getting your hair ruffled. Sure, you can only do it because you could practice it a billion times beforehand, but that is what makes it work. You took a situation that was functionally impossible and found the way to make it work. The fact that you actually have to play out the successful run also makes it feel rewarding because you're mastering a fight rather than just watching it play out.

That said, for all the gameplay feels fun, there are some issues. Probably the biggest flaw is that sometimes, it feels like you are dropped into situations with no real way out. A few times, I spawned in a situation that felt impossible no matter how often I reset, no matter what tools I used. This is separate from the satisfying moments when I needed the exact right series of movements to succeed, but instead, it involves specific configurations of enemies that basically seemed designed to do unavoidable damage. These were relatively rare, but considering that preserving your health is such a major aspect of the game, it feels bad when an otherwise great run goes south in an unavoidable way. It's possible I was missing the one right route out, but if so, it was obscured enough that it felt cheap.

The other is that the build variety felt a little weak. While the game allows you to get skills from other "schools" of foresight, each school is tied to a specific style of play, so it can sometimes be a net negative to gain a new skill if it doesn't mesh with your specific play style. More than once, I thought it might be worth taking a risk to branch outside of what my school specialized in, only to find it was either a waste or actively detrimental. Once I chose my school at the start of a run, I rarely felt a reason to deviate from it.

Forestrike is a great-looking game, with colorful and well-animated sprites that are easy to identify and follow. The graphics are relatively simple but in the exact kind of way that looks incredibly cool in motion. The animation for walking looks a little goofy, but fortunately, you rarely see it, as opposed to your barrage of kicks and punches. The soundtrack is quite good and captures the tone of the game well, but nothing is particularly exceptional.

Forestrike is a ton of fun. It's easy to look at it and assume it's just another beat-'em-up, but the surprisingly rigid and strict rules of combat make it feel a lot more like a themed puzzled game than a standard action title. It's intensely satisfying to emerge victorious from difficult situations and seemingly overwhelming combat. Only a few balance issues drag down the game, but they're not that serious. Puzzle and beat-'em-up fans should give Forestrike a shot.

Score: 8.0/10