More story & magic mechanics

A second hands-on preview of the upcoming game Leave revealed more about what players can expect from the new fantasy adventure title. Slated for release early next year, the Square Enix game tells an Isekai-style story about protagonist Frey Holland, who is mysteriously transported from her home in New York City to a magical realm. screen rant participated in a special in-depth look at the new game that showed more of the game’s narrative and further explained its core mechanics.

While part of the game’s story was shown in the last preview for Leave, the gameplay demo took place in the middle of the game and offered little exhibition or introductions. This latest look began in chapter two of the game and also included chapters three and five, which began just as Frey was being transported to the land of Athia. Athia has been devastated by an event Frey calls The Break, which has spread a corrupting miasma across the world, killing almost everyone it encounters – except Frey. Players will meet characters like Auden, who helps Frey out of a sticky situation and whose father was a Cognoscent, a sort of academic who studied The Break.

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These characters help set up Frey’s journey to meet and stop The Break, while others, like young girl Olevia, introduce players to the game’s important crafting mechanics – and as an added layer, also help make the occasional cracks in Frey’s more robust Facade through the sane nature of some of their interactions. Players can gather materials from across Athia to craft things like health potions and upgrade their cloak to provide additional benefits as they progress. The new dynamic between Frey and Cuff, her sentient talking bracelet, is also featured in the novelty Leave Preview, with parts of the tutorial showing how it can be used for features like a compass and scanning areas for valuables and enemies, alongside colorful banter between the two.

Boss fights are a big part of this new preview, showing the complexity of the combat the game has to offer and how they intertwine LeaveDetails on the dark history of . In the featured chapters, players face off against a ferocious dragon as well as one of the tantas – magical matriarchs who rule over Athia and whose conflict between them may have led to The Break – both of whom are seen engaged in a fight in which they are a knight uses one ship and conflicts as herself in a later chapter. The Tantas seem to see Frey as an intruder and a threat to their power, and defeating each of them will result in Frey unlocking new types of support and attack magic, of which there are four types in total in the game: Purple, Red, Green, and blue. Each fight, big or small, uses a letter-based ranking system that determines the amount of loot players receive afterward, losing ranks for things like taking damage or not using a variety of moves.

The preview shows how LeaveThe magical parkour traversal system from can be used in combat for a myriad of different purposes. This ranges from things like quickly navigating behind shielded enemies to hit their weak side, to quickly sliding behind environmental elements to dodge otherwise unblockable attacks like a dragon’s fiery breath. Players can unlock new types of this movement as they progress, starting with Frey’s basic flow ability and more later, allowing her to chain things like large leaps together to scale surfaces more efficiently.

Magic and Parkour are at the heart of Leave, but this fresh look at the game’s earlier chapters has revealed much more about how these core elements are naturally tied into the game’s narrative. A bigger look at Athia also emphasized how Leave aims for some of the best graphics in an open-world title, with Square Enix subsidiary developer Luminous Productions using a special in-house engine to design the game. This new look Leave has revealed that the game will be rich not only in terms of its traversal and combat system, but also in the intricacies of its storyline and characters when it releases early next year.

More: Forspoken: Everything we know so far

Leave will be released on January 24, 2023 for PC and PS5. screen rant attended a special hands-on session for this preview.