a short and sweet little adventure game with enough cleverness and thoughtful design to outshine the ways in which it is almost breathtakingly stupid. i'm sure everyone feels the same about the completely unnecessary lengthy combat section so I won't relitigate that point here, my bigger disappointment was in how i was enthralled by the prospect of engaging with the archaic morality of an ancient society from a modern perspective but you almost never have to do that: there's one character who you have to engage that line of dialogue with and it's thrilling, but he's soon revealed to be a cartoon supervillain and the rest of the conversations in the game are shockingly frictionless. that's not to say there weren't very enjoyable conversations here, like having an honest-to-gods socratic dialogue with a disciple of the big man himself, but i found myself disappointed by just how...normal everyone in the titular city was. which is, I suppose, the ultimate point the game is going for by the end, but frankly I hate that point.
the forgotten city is a very novelistic game, and I love many aspects of it for that, but it also indulges in something i scarcely see to the same degree outside of novels, where the author just goes all-in on a completely unhinged worldview that a bigger team may have been able to rein in. i'm fine with a game having a perspective i disagree with, such as this game's argument that civilisation really hasn't changed that much and maybe we're not so different after all, you and I etc etc, but it's when this argument runs right up to a flagrantly racist conspiracy theory the game wholeheartedly indulges in at the end that I find my patience waning.
i've complained a lot but I enjoyed my time with this game a great deal, I would adore for short, janky little games like this to come out on Game Pass every month. it's strongest moments shine bright, and it's easier to forgive the flaws when there's such a low barrier to entry. maybe i wouldn't hate God of War 2018 so much if it was 4 hours long and came free with the subscription that lets me play Halo Infinite.
as a Fallout: New Vegas DLC, I'd put it above Honest Hearts and Lonesome Road but below Dead Money and Old World Blues. please, someone Normal make One of These.
the forgotten city is a very novelistic game, and I love many aspects of it for that, but it also indulges in something i scarcely see to the same degree outside of novels, where the author just goes all-in on a completely unhinged worldview that a bigger team may have been able to rein in. i'm fine with a game having a perspective i disagree with, such as this game's argument that civilisation really hasn't changed that much and maybe we're not so different after all, you and I etc etc, but it's when this argument runs right up to a flagrantly racist conspiracy theory the game wholeheartedly indulges in at the end that I find my patience waning.
i've complained a lot but I enjoyed my time with this game a great deal, I would adore for short, janky little games like this to come out on Game Pass every month. it's strongest moments shine bright, and it's easier to forgive the flaws when there's such a low barrier to entry. maybe i wouldn't hate God of War 2018 so much if it was 4 hours long and came free with the subscription that lets me play Halo Infinite.
as a Fallout: New Vegas DLC, I'd put it above Honest Hearts and Lonesome Road but below Dead Money and Old World Blues. please, someone Normal make One of These.