The Forgotten City begins with us meeting a woman named Karen, she has pulled us out a river, having saved our lives. She wants to tell us what's going on but she's worried for another traveller who required the same assistance. His name is Al and he went into a nearby cave. We agree to help and soon after, we find Al having committed suicide, he left a note warning us not to go through the time portal. All that lies beyond it is suffering and a wasted life of trying to figure it out. Once we go through the portal, we are transported to Roman times to a remote city where its inhabitants are trapped reliving the same day (without their knowledge minus one or two members of the community) and they will be executed at the end of that day because someone breaks "the golden rule" (no member of the community is allowed to commit a sin, if one of them does, they are all horrifically changed into golden statues). The leader of the community, Magistrate Sentius charges us to solve the mystery and prevent the person from sinning and triggering the destruction of the community. He has also discovered a ritual that will restart the loop and every time the culling starts, he performs the ritual and restarts the day, theoretically giving us unlimited attempts to try and solve this.
While some people are tired of the time loop as a storytelling device, I think it's an underrated device for developing a narrative and fleshing out characters, we learn more every time we encounter the same set piece. I think the game has a great premise and the team fully takes advantage of it through the use of that device. While the overall beats of the plot aren't entirely shocking, it never failed to have a surprise up its sleeve or a twist to spring on me when I didn't expect it. The game features a great central mystery and there wasn't a moment in The Forgotten City where I wasn't intrigued or wanting to know what would happen next. Setting up that kind of plot isn't as easy as it looks and this is exemplary work from Modern Storyteller.
If I had to point to the best feature of the game, I think it's how expertly woven together every thread that this game creates ultimately is. There's a lot to juggle here between the different leads to track down, the group of 20 odd characters approximately to meet and learn about and exploring every corner of the deceptively small map (the game feeling huge when it's actually quite contained is an underrated aspect). Nothing feels out of place and it effortlessly shifts from one thing to another. This includes the characters, the game isn't overly long but the developers created a group distinct and instantly likeable people in a contained setting. The villains are appropriately sinister but somewhat understandable, the villagers each have a story where their motivations can be related to and there's a lot of theorizing about the nature of sin, what should qualify and how unjust this kind of arrangement actually is. It's as well written as any game I've seen and once again The Forgotten City is deserving of all the praise it got and more yet.
The one knock I heard on this game consistently before I got a chance to play it was the facial animations were firmly in the uncanny valley and that some of the graphics weren't up to par. Even that criticism of The Forgotten City is overblown, that kind of detail is hard to do accurately when a game has a giant budget. This game was primarily made by one person in their spare time at first with two more people eventually getting involved (the game started out as a Skyrim mod and they expanded on it). Those animations aren't flawless but considering what they were working with, they weren't distractedly bad and I'd consider any excessive complaining about it a nitpick. My biggest complaint is that the combat can be kind of clunky (this was magnified the most in the fighting through the palace, it's a fantastically written mission with some very distressing implications but I got frustrated with how inconsistent hitting the enemies could be). But even if they weren't executed perfectly, those parts of the game add so much to the narrative that it was worth playing through them then doing without.
It took me a while to get to this game and I'm always a little wary of something that's so universally beloved. But if you're primarily interested in story and world building, The Forgotten City is so charming and pulls of so much with seemingly so little difficulty. The team gets you to care for the characters despite reliving the same day again and again in the time loop, the mystery is as well crafted as any movie or TV production that I've seen recently (maybe even better) and the game never stagnates, I was always finding a new angle to pursue or a new quest to help a character I previously met. I wouldn't call it perfect (no piece of art really is in my opinion) but it not only met my high expectations but surpassed them. This game is a gem and provided you don't exclusively play FPS or JRPGs, I'd recommend it across the board.
