The Forgotten City Reviews
The Forgotten City is a game unlike any I’ve ever experienced before. I wasn’t kidding when I said I couldn’t put it down. Then I went back and played it again with a different character. I am truly shocked that this game was developed by only three people! The creative concept, smooth controls, clever time-looping mechanic, and stunning graphics are on par with the quality of work of some major studios.
I burned through The Forgotten City in a single session, fully intrigued by the game’s world but I just wish the game’s mechanics had a bigger influence over the story it was trying to tell.
The Forgotten City tells an immersive and incredible story. Combined with the beautiful city itself, the secrets of Modern Storyteller's first official release beg to be unraveled.
The Forgotten City is a fantastic entry in the oft-forgotten mystery-adventure genre, but a handful of flaws slightly detract from the experience.
A masterclass in narrative driven storytelling. Every character is important and every choice could lead to your doom. Play it and see if you can solve the mystery for yourself!
The Forgotten City just feels so satisfying to play. You'll constantly be solving little mysteries and discovering new secrets to hit you with some immediate gratifications, all the while working on the larger puzzlers and tangled storyline to reach the end.
Based on a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it’s great that The Forgotten City has been expanded upon and given a chance to truly shine as a standalone product. The writing is stellar, and the whole affair is so unique and interesting that you can’t help but get sucked in, attempting to find a way to put an end to The Golden Rule once and for all. Not all of the endings available are particularly gratifying, but follow The Forgotten City through to its true ending and you’ll be left with an experience that you won’t soon forget.
Clearly The Forgotten City is a game that speaks to those who revel in conversation. Those RPG fans who’d prefer not to fight or lash out, but converse and take a more steady, expository approach to finding a solution. It’s no exaggeration to say that the mythos Modern Storyteller both utilize and borrow from here is both surprising and satisfying with where it ends up heading. And while the narrative’s conclusion can come off too immersion-breaking or plain ridiculous for one’s taste, the caliber of writing for the most part is no less impressive for a game of this physical scale.
The Forgotten City is a consistently engaging mystery that I couldn't help but get trapped in. It features an amazing blend of narrative mystery buoyed by some fun bouts of exploration and light combat, just enough to really break up the pace. It's a game that encourages you to put pressure on its established boundaries to see what you can break and change. There's a brilliant web of mystery within a time loop that you can manipulate, delivering some great and clever commentary around a whole bunch of topics. Seeing how far Modern Storyteller has come from "The Forgotten City" mod to this full game makes me beyond excited to see what Nick Pearce and the team come up with next.
With that said, I still highly recommend that anyone who loved the original mod that inspired The Forgotten City or anyone that just likes a good story-driven title play this game. The time loop mechanic, evolving dialogue, and myriad of choices and scenarios that occur make for one hell of a narrative ride, just keep your expectations of the combat low, or else you may be disappointed
While I was not keen on the narrative function of the time travel, it worked as a good gameplay mechanic and added to the individual stories of the people within the secluded Roman city. The action was unnecessary, but the horror was welcome. But even in the face of that, The Forgotten City is easy to recommend for story-centric players. “Caveat emptor” does not apply here.
The Forgotten City brings out the adventurer in all of us and showcases just how capable mods can be. While the runtime is kept short, multiple endings increased replay value for a few more days spent in the ruins. In addition, there’s an impressive degree of detail put into these characters that only falters in some aspects of the general gameloop. Regardless, I’m looking forward to what this game encourages modders to produce in the future.
The Forgotten City offers a lot of great replay value for those looking to solve compelling story puzzles in multiple ways.
In the genre, it has been years since such a "confidential" puzzle/adventure game (4 people) had not been so blown away by its script and its mastery of the narrative. Even if the branches are not infinite and the lifespan is ultimately quite limited, the game questions as much as it fascinates.
Review in French | Read full review
The Forgotten City transports us fully to the Roman era and does it with great skill, with a totally engaging story and very original gameplay mechanics that together work wonders. The recreation of the Roman villa is spectacular and we will not stop until we discover all its secrets. To put the negative point, the performance and the graphic section is not his forte.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Ironically, The Forgotten City is a game I’ll never forget – it’s a brilliant narrative adventure that requires you to think about how your actions will affect others in order to achieve your goal. I never played the original mod but if it was even half as good as this, I can see why it was universally praised by the three million people who played it – it’s a very unique and well-executed concept combined with an interesting narrative, fun gameplay, satisfying multi-possibility solutions, and trophies that push you to change the way you play the game. All-in-all, it’s a fantastic experience that is best played with no guides or walkthrough, simply set aside a few hours and see if you can solve the many small events which lead up to the big mystery.
Utterly absorbing and rarely anything less than completely fascinating, The Forgotten City is an intoxicating microcosm of Ancient Roman society embedded in a dialogue heavy adventure and wrapped around one of the most smartly designed mysteries and sleuthing yarns to come along in a good long while. Occasional technical creakiness and issues aside, it's a deeply pleasant irony that The Forgotten City will remain long in your memory after the credits have completed their roll the first, second, third and fourth time.
Ultimately, though, The Forgotten City is one of those games that will inspire other games for years to come. It’s absurd to think it was mostly developed by a three-person team, and yet the clear, unanimous focus a team this small permits is evident throughout the entire game. It is clever not just in terms of its story or themes, but in how it packages and delivers those themes through one of the most inspired and tight gameplay loops I’ve seen in a long time.
The Forgotten City does a fabulous job exploring interesting moral quandaries through excellently written dialogue and characters.
Deftly written, smart, and consistently clever, The Forgotten City makes for a rousing, spirited adventure that is well worth taking part in. I wish it were longer, but that doesn't do much to knock what has been accomplished here.