The Forgotten City Reviews

The Forgotten City is an incredible game with meticulously crafted puzzles and an engrossing time loop story. While it has some quirks, this cloud version is a fantastic way to play the game thanks to the Switch’s portability.

It's time to travel back 2000 years and visit a cursed ancient Roman city for this unique take on the murder mystery formula.

A Roman city resides within a large mountain, hidden from light and prying eyes. Only 23 people call this secret society home, and they appear to live harmoniously together, but looks can be deceiving. Time has taken its toll on each soul, but they can never leave, and more pressing yet, cannot sin, for even the most minor white lie or act of theft will steal the life from everyone. An angry god lords over this cave, and any misgiving will trigger a curse called “The Golden Rule.” The offenses of previous generations can be seen across this city – grim reminders not to sin, no matter where you are or what you are doing. These people need your help, and they somehow summon you from 2,000 years into the future.

The Forgotten City is a beauty to behold no matter the eye, a deeply contemplative story matched with wonderful puzzles based in classical antiquity.

Modern Storyteller has done a great job with the few people they have and the scope of the work they pulled off. Not many developers can pull off a game with multiple events, triggers, and mechanics that are all up to the player to pull off. You can easily have a very broken game this way (even from a AAA game developer), but they pulled it off and that benefits the game’s narrative and the player’s ambitions. 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. ∎

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.

The Forgotten City offers a lot of great replay value for those looking to solve compelling story puzzles in multiple ways. The adventure portions are lackluster, but not bad enough to ruin the entire game. The Forgotten City will be most enjoyable for those that never experienced the first version and its set pieces. Still, those former players will discover enough modifications to find the full game worthwhile.

I had the pleasure of playing The Forgotten City from Modern Storyteller in a preview build a couple months ago. I was absolutely blown away by it. Not only did it offer an intriguing premise, but everything from the writing, acting, soundtrack, and graphics were outstanding. It was one of the rare few games that I couldn’t put down once I’d started it. I can’t believe this whole project started out as a Skyrim mod!

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.

This is all really fun in theory, but in practice, I didn’t quite experience the game how I thought I was going to. I looped through the game about four times, and none through any fault of my own they were all forced story moments. After my first loop, I was easily able to figure out and finish everyone’s quests in the next loop and reach the first of four endings which then caused a loop and I reached the canon ending in my final loop. It’s immediately clear what actions will force a loop so it’s pretty easy to avoid doing those, especially since it’s not in your best interest to have to be constantly resetting the timeline and wasting time redoing what you already did. There’s maybe a quest or two (that I noticed) that have completion methods linked to looping the timeline which would be an actual benefit (like stealing a ton of money to help someone with money problems), but you don’t have to do it that way as evident from my playthrough. Where I’m getting at is that in a game about solving a mystery, I wish the time looping mechanic had a bit more of a proactive element in solving said mystery.

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 presence of its time-loop premise may fall too far back into the shadow, but as minimal its influence on moment-to-moment gameplay may be, the consolation is that it allows the writing to rightly take center stage. Its momentary combat segments are woeful in their implementation and there's always a worry that another annoying bug or two can crop up when you least expect it. But for all its occasional grievances -- that don't add up to too much -- it's the intriguing mystery as much the appeal of its investigative leads across many a conversation where the strengths of The Forgotten City end up standing out most of all.

The Forgotten City is an exceptionally clever game with some of the best puzzle design and story beats in recent memory.

I 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. Anyone looking for Skyrim-light should beware, though, as you'll surely be disappointed by the fact that the game focuses on its story as opposed to its combat.