The Forgotten City Review (Michael {United Critics})
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The Forgotten City Review
Factors
Rating
Description
🎮Gameplay
8.5
Imagine it as a Skyrim mystery.
📷Graphics
8-9.5
Top-notch environment but the character modeling is meh.
🎧Narration/Audio
9
Pleasing to the ears.
😮Variety
8
Variety in characters only.
🎰Re-playability
7
There’s an option to re-play for different ending, but too hectic.
💲Price
8
Only if you are fan of mystery solving.
No biased comments have been made just because The Forgotten City is a part of Skyrim. The review considers it as a standalone game. I highly recommend you to try the game with a blind perspective. You are free to avoid the Plot info, but it’s not a major spoiler.
📝Story/Plot without major spoilers:
Imagine an ancient time where a single sin can wallop an instant catastrophe upon a well-civilized city. During this misfortune, you inevitably get sucked into a portal of time and now the burden of stopping this tragedy lies on your shoulder. Will you prevent people from carrying out a misdeed or challenge the Gods themselves for creating the fear of death wandering inside everyone’s mind?
🎮Gameplay:
Before jumping into the gameplay analysis, I would like to mention that there are 2 ways to play this game. Either continue a no checkpoint path with start-point respawns or manually save the progress whenever you are about to commence a vital action. Respawning doesn’t completely throw you off to zero progress, but it surely consumes some time to retrace certain evidence.
Simplicity-
The thing that stands out the most for The Forgotten City is the primary focus on the story interactions. The sheer effort given to the lore setup makes your walkthrough full of suspense and twists. There are no critical, quick time actions or complex UI to understand. The interactions and choices are straightforward that plain sails your progression. The minimal restrictions surely helped me focus more on the story/case, but after a while, it felt repetitive and overused. Thanks to the distinct NPC stories since they kept me going forward for the ending.
Characters-
With about 20+ distinct NPCs stories, you will surely need some solid memorization ability and good instincts to solve the game’s mystery. In this tricky situation, identifying foes from friends is your major scrutiny. Trusting a character can both, massacre the city or help you pass a hurdle. Are all the characters mesmerizing? Probably not. But their narration makes them extravagantly lively and interesting. On average, I would say, you can squeeze at least 10+ dialogues from each NPC, and some characters never shut up.
Fluid gameplay-
Fluid here depicts non-restrictive and create your own path type of gameplay. Imagine your taxi drops you in the middle of the Japanese market. Now it’s up to you in which direction you wanna proceed and which shop you will visit first. The format of no linear story to follow makes the gameplay quite dynamic and potent. You are free to avoid any interaction with the NPC and continue your personal investigation, nor are you obligated to visit any place.
The grind-
Now is the crucial question. Is the grinding worth it? Is it fruitful enough to interrogate every residing person? Well, it goes both ways. Sometimes writers leaning heavily on historical events and beliefs make the game appeal absurd for some players. But at the same time, it might interest some mythology lovers who invested a lot of time trying to uncover the story. Yes, there are multiple endings, but none of them are what you expected. Plus, a certain ending is too hard to grind in my opinion.
📷Graphics:
The Forgotten City exhibits astonishing visual impressions with multiple delightful colour combinations. Landscapes showcasing human civilization is on point even in medium graphics. The constructions are well detailed, but the primary downside is the low texture of character facial expressions. They all look dead inside with no sense of visual expressions. But luckily, the voice narration saves the day.
📝Main Pros and Cons:
Pros-
In-depth story.
Choices matter.
Unrestrictive gameplay.
Every character is different with amazing narration.
Easy to traverse through the map.
Availability of manual saves.
Cons-
Multiple mentions of different mythology characters that had no role in the story.
The endings are hit or a miss.
🏷️Tips to new players:
Avoid any sort of trailers or spoilers. Going total blank for this game is the perfect formula. Manual saves are your friend in need. Just a heads up, stealing counts as a crime too.
✉️Miscellaneous Information:
Info about DLCs-
Only soundtrack and digital art DLCs are available. Soundtrack can be attractive for acoustic people, but the digital art is utterly useless. You can easily live without these DLCs.
😇Honest Rating:
If you are coming here from Outer Worlds, then welcome to the same game style but without guns and aliens. The Forgotten City has the proficiency to shine its name in the gaming news department. Yes, I enjoyed the game for its beautiful graphics, immersive storyline and pleasing narration. But there is still a room for improvement. If puzzle-based case solving is your thing, just grab the title already.
Rating: 8.5/10
What if the God is scared of me?