The Forgotten City

The Forgotten City does a fabulous job exploring interesting moral quandaries through excellently written dialogue and characters.

The Forgotten City is a deeply satisfying puzzle adventure that will have you questioning what it means to sin.

An elegant mystery with curiosity at its heart.

An intriguing mystery adventure with outstanding writing and performances.

This is all bolstered by strong art direction and technical design. Although the soundtrack and some instances of stiff character animation remind me that this was once a Skyrim mod, environments are nicely detailed, strikingly lit, and filled with era-appropriate pieces of clutter. If you want, you can even discuss the intricacies of Roman architecture with one of the NPCs and then observe those same intricacies throughout the city. The attention to historical accuracy is enthralling. I learned several things about real-life history during my playthrough, and not all were Roman-centric.

One of the better choice-driven games in recent memory that makes you feel like you have ownership over your actions and the narrative flow

A time-loop murder mystery set in ancient Rome is enlivened by excellent acting, dialogue, and good old-fashioned skulduggery

For fans of storytelling, The Forgotten City is a solid recommendation. Freed from the shackles of Skyrim, the full game tells a captivating story elevated by clever and humorous writing. With the interesting time loop mechanic creating further situations full of comedy and intrigue, settling down across a few evenings with The Forgotten City will delight. We just wish the combat was either improved or not there at all, and the technical setbacks weren't quite so rampant.

The Forgotten City is a brilliant piece of narrative work that feels like a time capsule of Skyrim's jank, revitalised with a gripping story that's just long enough that it never loses momentum. It is, as always, hard to fully recommend a Cloud Version of a game that's available elsewhere in a more concrete form, but if you're accepting of the associated 'risks', this is a well-presented and brilliant time loop game and well worth a play.

All in all, The Forgotten City has surprised us with how engaging it is. The time loop mechanic is used to great effect and works much more than a simple gimmick, and the standout is the writing, which keeps you invested line after line. It's not a home run, with some overall clunkiness to the game and certain segments that could easily have been stripped out, but it's definitely a 10-12 hour adventure worth taking, with many paths and possibilities to uncover.