Time loops can often be messy and convoluted, but The Forgotten City tackled such a concept with fantastic writing that delved into philosophy and history. The visuals depicted a Roman city with a curse bearing over its people, and the goal was to get to the bottom of said curse that would inevitably kill the population if one person sinned. With each loop it became possible to stave it off for longer, but never forever, since humans love being naughty. It was a great setup and I loved its focus on narrative—there was a lot of talking, and that was okay with me.

It didn’t give step by step directions on how to progress, which is in stark contrast to how the majority of "detective" games do the work for you. It was trial and error until all the pieces fit, certain moral decisions required to get by. Combat was optional and even then, it was bare-bones and probably didn’t even need to be there. I really enjoyed it; I'll always be on the lookout for titles like this.

It's just a dialogue simulator with RPG mechanics. I played the game for a little over 1 hour, but it failed to capture my interest. The amount of dialogue we had to listen to complete the main and side missions managed to overwhelm me. As soon as you start the game it's like you're entering a grind fest. Everything about the game feels like an unbearable chore. On the other hand, even though I completely turned off motion blur and increased the sharpness, the graphics of the game still look very blurry. Since the game was developed by a small team, everyone generally praised it for support purposes, but unfortunately it did not seem like an interesting enough game to be worth my time. Such a dialogue-oriented game should also offer variety in gameplay so that the player does not get bored. Just walking around, listening to dialogue, and then looking around for notes makes the game boring enough for me to ignore it, even if it has an interesting story.

Gostei muito da proposta do jogo, bem instigante e fácil de se situar no mundo todo.
As reflexões aqui colocadas também são bem instigantes, realmente vale a pena jogar sem saber nada sobre.
Infelizmente, porém, acho que algumas incongruências são meio fácil de serem encontradas, principalmente pela proposta complexa do jogo, algumas coisas acabam ficando meio sem sentido, mas no geral vale absurdamente a pena jogar isso aqui.
Zerei acho que com 5 horas aproximadamente, fiquei mais umas 3 horas andando pelo mapa explorando / pegando o restante das conquistas, vale a pena!

I find it a little tricky to review detective games in particular, and not just because I'm actually bad at my job. In a sense, detective games at their finest let you believe that you're actually more clever than you are. They lay out a trail of clues and see how well you follow those to the solution. If a game does this well, you as a player get to feel like you unspooled the tapestry by your own wits - and if a game does this poorly, you feel like you're being pulled by the nose through an obvious series of investigatory milestones.

The Forgotten City is a damn good detective game, great even. It's an intricately designed clockwork puzzle that stands among the genre's best titles.

The titular city itself is stuck in both time and place. You come across it at the bottom of a ravine, which is itself at the bottom of a cave, and soon it's going to die. The only law that's followed here is the golden rule - any sin commited by anybody for any reason will lead to everybody's immediate destruction. One of the small group of inhabitants is going to doom them all, but you can save them. You can go back in time to the start of the same fateful day, each time with more knowledge to help you unfurl the city's many secrets.

So begins the first of many loops. You don't want me to say more because learning the intricacies of this city and its well-drawn characters is essentially the entire game. Each thread you start to pull on in your quest to unravel the mystery leads you to another, and then another still. Everything and everybody is connected here, and it's impossible not to lose yourself in the rabbit hole of learning about each inhabitant's stories and goals.

The investigation requires you to not just get to know people, but to understand and exploit the rules of the city. Sometimes the total destruction of everything around you can actually work out in your favour. It's also refreshing to have such freedom in how to approach most of the game's mysteries. Impressively, the game manages to feel open-ended and non-linear while never really being overwhelmingly loose.

As soon as I expected that I had wrapped my mind around The Forgotten City, it kept throwing me through another (time) loop. Even the ending, a bit over-the-top as it gets, felt deserved and satisfying. It was what I wanted, after so much death and pain, and I felt like be I earned it.

What a marvelous game! This definitely hits the same sweet spot as Outer Wilds, although it doesn't quite evoke as many "magic moments" and is a bit more streamlined. Characters are also slightly more one-dimensional and often just there to have specific "function". But don't let that hold you back: It's still incredibly well done, very engaging, with a beatiful and interesting setting, voicework and music. I inhaled this over the course of two days. Big recommendation, if this kind of game interests you even in the slightest!

What an awesome time travel game. Super interesting mystery game with light RPG/combat elements. The dialog is the game's strongest point, great writing, fantastic soundtrack, everything from funny to philosophical. The authors have also done their homework when it comes to Roman/Greek/Egyptian mythology and have woven these elements into this game in a very coherent way. The end of the time loop is also never frustrating, as you always have new impulses/ideas of what else you could try and some tasks are taken over by a helper so that you don't have to do them all over again, great idea :) The fighting doesn't feel particularly fluid or good, but fortunately it's limited. If you like good stories and ancient culture/mythology, you have to play this.

A fine addition to the "Groundhog Day" Genre. The story has a lot of great twists, and the gameplay surprises more than you'd expect. It's got a bit of Unreal Engine clunk that gets in the way at times, even messing up some sort interactions once or twice, but they were mostly minor.
It did have the unusual situation in which not spoiling things actually ruined things a bit for me. Before I knew it was a "Groundhog Day" Game, I tried to minmax my first day, resulting in missing some potential interactions, as you're no longer able to talk to one character after a certain criteria is met. It's hard to blame the game for that, but just something to bear in mind as you navigate the orthogame.
Ultimately, those are my only issues. The story continues to surprise even hours into it, and I wholly recommend it.

if you've grown up in the american south like i have then you've probably had the experience of being a child and plopping an extremely well prepared pile of grits and just grits into a bowl and then sitting down and eating it, and feeling an uncanny amount of love and technique coming from a bowl of flavorless porridge.

the forgotten city has a truly fantastic premise and some legitimately impressive open-ended story structure. there are anecdotes and sections from this game that are actually pretty pristine.

but like. what is this game? is it a thrilling detective/investigation game? no lol. you do as much actual investigating in this game as you do in shenmue- strung along by a help system that tells you explicitly where to go the lion's share of the time even if you disable all of the settings in the options. And let me tell you, this city is no Yokosuka.

is it an impactful invoking of the time loop mechanic? ehhhh not really. there's no sense of schedule or temporality even really existing in the loop. nothing in this world happens until you will it to happen, so the time loop almost comes off as an easy way to make all the puzzles reset so the player is liability-free lol

fine. is it at least a decent narrative adventure about an absurd scenario that explores some interesting moral ideas? yeah fair enough that's where the game earns the most points. but even then, the game seems to shy away of having you actually tangle with characters about their ethics most of the time. you get to either stare at the camera like jim from the office or, if the game is feeling generous, you get to dispense threadkilling r/stoic reddit burns onto NPCs' ideologies to win the speech check and save the day. after which point the npc will return to its default dialogue options unchanged or just refuse to speak to you outright.

fundamentally this game gets to exist because it was a really really good skyrim mod and this narrative is like very neat and attractive. and as a skyrim mod it demonstrated incredible creative verve and technical ingenuity. i don't blame this obviously talented dude for polishing this up as a standalone experience and making a little dosh with it and we will be playing whatever he makes next but i am not inspired to pragmatically recommend it over its growing list of meta time loop mystery contemporaries.

also it has danganronpa ending real bad lol just a warning in advance