The Forgotten City review

this review is in beta. critique most welcome.

There is no game like Outer Wilds. That doesn’t stop fans from search for the elusive Wilds-like. One game that keeps popping up is The Forgotten City. Being very fond of flying into the sun and eating burned marshmallows, I was intrigued to try another knowledge based game.

I’d like to start by discussing expectations. Because I feel this review, and my experience with the game at large, is in big part result of them. When the internets sold me on The Forgotten City, I was painted an image of a knowledge-based time loop mystery with lots of philosophy set in the roman empire. A period drama whodunnit Outer Wilds meets The Talos Principle, count me in! The review is coloured through this lens, with expectations you might’ve not had.

I usually begin reviews with the presentation. Alas, the graphics are often wonky and the mechanics are stiff. The NPC models are aggressively Bethesda-esque, and that’s not a compliment. Part of game’s fame comes from it starting life as a Skyrim mod made by 3 people, and unfortunately it shows. I can’t deny it’s an impressive feat, and that few could create such an experience, but as I paid more for this than for some of my all-time favourite stories, I can’t see this as an excuse for rocks with poor clipping and countless opportunities to get stuck in invisible walls. I think part of my negative perception in this regard stems from TFC going for a “realistic” look, which beside being subjectively boring is hard to do well on a budget. I genuinely think I would’ve liked the exact same game styled as well as indies tend to measurably more.

Wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey loops in games are fun. The Forgotten City’s offer a unique take on conditions for how they end and what happens when they do. You have to literally fight for a way out! This raises the stakes and makes it a bit more involved, but also leads to situations when immersion breaks and you see the good old “YOU ARE DEAD”. Though this does make some things possible, and feels almost necessary due to the premise - you get some, you lose some. In general, I wasn’t a fan of more floaty nature of loops and their length - the world isn’t fully in your control, yet it doesn’t do much by itself either. A lot of tasks require rote setup every time, to the point the game itself offers a way to automate them. But even then, it takes several minutes to get everything into a state you need, which adds up and makes you want to prolong loops. This prevents the strategy of try-fail-try again. That’s particularly saddening since, as I mentioned above, the reset conditions are unique and could be fun to experiment with if they were leaned into more. There is also presence of progression - you slowly gather physical items, and in fact may sometimes cut the loop short to get one and use it in the next iteration. But I can’t consider it a drawback - TUNIC is a nice example of a knowledge-aided game with tangible unlocks.

But I still felt that I as a player had little of the agency that makes knowledge games such an alluring concept. The whole point is that you can do anything from the outset, but have to figure it out on your own. The Forgotten City didn’t feel like learning a puzzle box of a world, but instead like playing messenger between a dozen people and occasionally picking “right” choices, a linear guided tour of a roman city. For example, I correctly guessed one of the “main mysteries” almost immediately, yet could not act on it until talking to enough people for the game to pat me on the back and say “well, looks like it’s …, now you can …”. If I can’t use my own deductions and need the game to confirm it and make a dialogue option available, I’m not playing a puzzle - I’m playing a narrative mystery masquerading as one!

Now, what about the philosophical part of the pitch? Either I am missing something or have put my elitist hat on, but I didn’t find it that interesting. “Hm yes, we can’t really make a perfect moral system”, “Hm yes, cultures build off one another”. I think the reason I find The Talos Principle blend of “philosophical game” great but didn’t enjoy TFC’s is that TTP isn’t as… patronising? It’s definitely not as confrontational, often just giving you a text and time to think. Here, the “philosophy” bits often come in direct debates, which feel infuriating in general. Of course I can’t win when the “opponent” controls what I can say! And someone seems to have replaced all my “none of the above” buttons with “okay, you are right, I give up”.

Before wrapping things up, let’s briefly touch the ending, because the destination often affects how we remember the journey. It was underwhelming. Yes, there is a twist, one so “grand” there is a warning for streamers not to reveal it to viewers when you open the game for the first time. But I found it… meaningless? It didn’t re-contextualise anything or play into any of the themes there might’ve been, just another shallow last-minute layer piled on on a game that doesn’t explore the ones it already has. Haha, the butler didn’t do it - it was actually the sniper from across the city! There is only one game I know that managed to pull this off, and TFC isn’t *HARDCORE* enough. And once we get past the end game and into end scene, the “true ending” epilogue, I think “What a load of sappy saccharine” perfectly sums it up.

Alright, I think this review ended up overtly harsh, more so than intended. When I just finished TFC and voiced my impressions in a chat, a person who was considering buying the game on sale asked if my conclusion was a Not Recommend™. No! I think it’s fine, but just that. Returning to the very beginning of this review, it’s all a matter of expectations. If you tame yours before diving in (quite literally), you might find a pretty fun ride.