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Jul 28, 2021 · The Forgotten City is a mystery adventure game of exploration and deduction. Travel 2,000 years into the past and relive the final days of a cursed Roman city, where if one person sins, everyone dies. Combat is an option, but violence will only get you so far.
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- Apollo of my eye.
- The Forgotten City Gameplay Screenshots
- Have you played the original The Forgotten City Skyrim mod?
- Verdict
By Gabriel Moss
Updated: Jul 30, 2021 3:05 pm
Posted: Jul 27, 2021 7:37 pm
It’s an absolute triumph that a Skyrim mod could reach 3,000,000 downloads, let alone win a national award for the quality of its writing, but 2015 mod The Forgotten City did both. Six years later, this freshly remade standalone game from original developer Modern Storyteller reworks, refines, and greatly expands upon the same cleverly interconnected ensemble cast and morally provocative story of that already fantastic mod. Breaking away from the Elder Scrolls universe finally allows this terrific adventure to come into its own, with plenty of fresh twists, turns, and a heaping helping of self-aware dialogue that can leave your mouth ajar.
“The many shall suffer for the sins of the one.” This is the fabled Golden Rule that serves as the central focal point of The Forgotten City’s story, and it dictates that you and the city’s 23 or so residents can’t steal from or attack another human, lest the city’s guardian statues spring to life and methodically turn each citizen into solid gold - trapping them forever. But you don’t need constant combat to make it delightfully fascinating to unravel each of the city’s many delicate layers, and the deeper you go the more obvious it becomes that a life without clear crime is no utopia. The city’s least savory denizens use loopholes, social engineering, and deception to entrap and purposefully mislead one another, skirting the Golden Rule altogether. The Forgotten City is positively dripping with brain teasing moral quandaries as a result – without spoiling anything, there are points where you have to break the Golden Rule, as well as times where you must stop it from being broken, even if it would mean helping innocent people out of awful predicaments.
The absolute best part of The Forgotten City is its excellently written characters. Each person has their own motives, problems, and opinions of one another and of the Golden Rule itself to discover, with standouts like the conniving Aurelia being particularly fun to talk to. While I was initially a bit disappointed to see that there were no RPG systems to use during dialogue, especially after a game like Disco Elysium showed just how interesting they could be, the conversations are very engaging without the need to roll skill checks. Those things arguably wouldn’t even fit into what The Forgotten City is trying to do anyway, as its dialogue is tightly written and filled with mysteries to piece together, and your decisions carry more than enough weight as-is.
The absolute best part of The Forgotten City is its excellently written characters.
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The only misstep with its characters is that their top notch dialogue occasionally suffers from facial animations that range from dubious to outright hilarious. Modern Storyteller says a fix might arrive for launch, but it wasn’t worked out in time for this review, leaving stiff performances from otherwise exquisitely well-written and decently-voiced NPCs.
It isn’t exactly the longest adventure either, about 10 hours if you want to see everything and reach the canon ending at a reasonable pace, but it absolutely had me wanting to follow every thread I could find. You can “beat” The Forgotten City early if you don’t want to do everything, but you’re really missing out on its most interesting bits by doing so. It’s practically begging you to tease these layers apart too, and all that intrigue is eventually paid off quite well.
Yes, I beat it!
I installed it but didn't finish it
I have not played it
I'd never even heard of it before this
The Forgotten City is an incredibly unique and self-aware adventure game that does a fabulous job of exploring complex ideas stemming from a basic question: “what is objectively good?” If you’re expecting a full-blown action RPG that spans dozens of hours, this 10-hour jaunt and its fairly simple combat may only whet your appetite, but it still spo...
- Gabriel Moss
Jul 29, 2021 · The Forgotten City is literally a time-loop game, and it makes excellent use of that magical reset button. You begin the adventure in the present day, stumbling into some ancient Roman...
- Senior Editor
- clivingston@pcgamer.com
Sep 23, 2020 · The Forgotten City is rated 'Mighty' after being reviewed by 73 critics, with an overall average score of 84. It's ranked in the top 9% of games and recommended by 92% of critics.
- (73)
- PC, Nintendo Switch
Jul 27, 2021 · The Forgotten City has been reviewed by 73 critics and currently has a 'Mighty' rating. Read and browse them all to learn what the top critics in the video game industry are saying.
- (73)
Oct 12, 2021 · Showing 17 Critic Reviews. 100. Gaming Age. Oct 12, 2021. It’s a fun game built around a tantalizing mystery, and once it gets its hooks into you, you’re guaranteed to want to keeping playing until you’ve uncovered all its endings. Read More. FULL REVIEW. PlayStation 5. 95. Gaming Nexus. Aug 3, 2021.
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Jul 28, 2021 · The Forgotten City is a time loop murder mystery set in a mythological city. The game offers incredible freedom, inviting you to manipulate the timeline so that events play out differently.
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