izigame.me

“The point is... that you are under a misconception that Forgotten City is a time-loop puzzle game. It is not. What it is really, is a fetch-quest game.”
The first half of my review is spoiler-free, after which I will leave behind a detailed account of the flaws in Forgotten City and its plot. Some of the names might be wrong because they weren’t memorable enough to remember.
I was attracted to Forgotten City because I wanted to fill the void left behind by Outer Wilds, an exceptional video game with a time-looping mystery at its core that requires thought and attention. Forgotten City however is the opposite. On the contrary I walked away from the experience puzzled as to how the game can maintain such a high score AND be compared to other excellent time-looping stories like Outer Wilds. To me, it doesn’t even stand on the pedestal astride these excellent games.
Forgotten City lures you in with a polished, visually stunning exterior and an interesting setting that takes place in a small Roman town frozen in time. Its citizenry are diverse and represent the cultural and racial diversity of the Roman Empire. Upon starting a fresh save, you are presented with an intriguing mystery, and numerous pathways are presented to you to find a way to open the puzzle at the game’s core. There’s the intrapersonal relationships you must build with the townfolk, then the political element of an impending election to swear in a new town magistrate which has polarized the town into two opposing camps; and even that of the religious, in which numerous religions are struggling to co-exist peacefully.
Midway through the game, several reveals occur that set up the endgame. It's here that Forgotten City falls flat on its face and commits it's most heinous sin: the bait and switch. Your objective then changes. No longer do you need to worry about the time-loop, or stop the bad guy from winning the election. The real objective all along is to find four McGuffins that will unlock the final area so you may confront "the Man in the Room." 1 requires you to complete all the character sub-plots, 1 can be found in the world through exploration and 2 require you to complete the Priestess' story. All of that culminates in a lazy stupendous ending that obliterates the historical authenticity the game spends so long trying to set up.
In summary, this is NOT on the same level as Outer Wilds. Do not come here looking for that experience, you won't find it.
++SPOILERS BELOW++

The fundamental issue with Forgotten City is that the characters and your relationships with them don't matter. At first I thought doing favours for them would allow you to influence the election (More on this later) but really they only serve as "checkmarks" on a list of variables you need to get one of the McGuffins ie the "election substory."
The politics in this game was the single most disappointing element and I need to break it down into two parts.
First, after Sentius reveals he retains his memories with each wipe, the game sets the stage for an epic metaphysical showdown between you and a virtual opponent. His demeanour changes, for he knows you can't defeat him. You could start and restart the game at will, pump him full of arrows or bullets, sway the votes against him, but the Golden Rule simply allows him to undo your efforts and cling onto power. After this reveal, I was left stunned. How could I possibly defeat an enemy like this? Somebody who negated my overwhelming advantage by abusing the rule of the very prison that kept everyone locked away!? This was a phenomenal reveal, almost as epic as realizing Vivec in Morrowind didn’t want to fight the player because he knew you could reload the game and fight until he died. And what happens after that? Nothing. After the reveal I became too focused on hunting the four McGuffins that I actually forgot to talk to Sentius again. He gets swept to the sidelines and ceases to matter.
Second, once you unlock the main “story gates,” Galerius, who is a game mechanic originally designed to help save you time in doing the tedious fluffwork to open the story gates, is the small marble you flick to activate a very intricate Rube Goldberg machine that finishes with him getting elected as magistrate. The ONLY PHYSICAL INPUT FROM THE PLAYER is to ask the Priestess to start the election. That's when you realise the election story only exists so you can fetch McGuffin #2 of 4 required to open the temple. You don’t even need to leverage your relationships with the townfolk to build a political coalition to support Galerius, they just automatically fall in line behind him. So to sum up, your relationships with the townsfolk DON'T MATTER AT ALL. Malleolus and his gladiator minion, set up to be the initial antagonists are comically brushed aside.
To achieve the canon ending, you only need to open 2 story gates:
1. Successfully elect Galerius once and free the village idiot, opening up McGuffin 2.
2. Receive the underworld reveal from the priestess (to do this you just need to ask 3 NPCs about their origin stories and report back to the priestess.)
After this, the remaining 3 McGuffins can be achieved freely. McGuffin #1 can be found in the Christian cave which if you’re not careful like I was and jump in like a commando, triggers the Golden Rule because you violated Octavia’s NAP. McGuffin #3 and 4 are in the hands of a soyboy Egypt nationalist who is happy to criticize Rome and Greece for stealing Egyptian gods and culture, but gets butthurt when you make the point his gods and culture were stolen from the Sumerians.
Credit where it’s due, the catacombs that migrate through the four different architectural time periods was phenomenal, showcasing how each culture evolved and changed over time. Clearly the map, environment and settings were created by someone with passion for history. Also the beautifully designed world does promote exploration, and I was able to find most of the final areas in the game relatively easily.
After that, all that’s left is to open the Temple which reveals one of the stupidest laziest endings I’ve ever seen. Effectively, the arbiter of the game's mystery is an omniscient being, who in all his alien might, was forced to babysit a town of idiots because his girlfriend gave up her powers to be among them. I cringed so hard when I walked into his chamber and saw his stupid ass appearance. In my first run I did try to find a way to reason with him on moral or philosophical grounds, but instead the game shoehorns you into initiating a stupid fight and has to tell you to take Persephone's crown (when at no point was her crown EVER mentioned in the game beforehand. You then restart the loop, come back to his throne room and then "Stephen Strange" him into being your time prisoner, AND THEN HE JUST ACCEPTS IT AND LEAVES. Just like that.
Replayability is a joke because 2 of the 4 endings are variations of the same. The only difference is talking to Galerius first. The substory of Sentius' daughter makes ZERO SENSE. It's only there to serve as an alternate ending.
Ending 1 can be achieved within the first 30 seconds of a save by simply shooting Galerius, and then Sentius when he comes running past. The different “class” options at the start are dumb. I picked the historian trait thinking it would come in handy by opening some secret areas, dialogue options and pathways when all it did was add some useless prompts.
“Do you know what this place is?”
“Um yes it’s a duat! *nerd emoji*”
“Ok. Moving on.”
When I saw the game gave me the option to bring a literal GLOCK with me, I automatically assumed the other options would be just as strong in other elements of the game. I was wrong on that.