The Forgotten City Review (PS5)

The Forgotten City is the success story of a Skyrim mod that evolved in a stand-alone game. The journey was long and treacherous, especially that the project was developed by a handful of people. But the concept is intriguing, the story is well put together and the switch to Unreal Engine 4 makes the game look like a serious production. But is it worth investing your time in this game or should you stick to Skyrim?   

Nick Pearce, the original developer is also the one who founded the Modern Storyteller studio and turned the “simple” mod into a fully-fledged game, by adding a lot of new content. What remained the same is the premise: travel back in time until you either figure out how and what to do, or you get so entangled in the web of time that you will find yourself trapped forever.

But it all starts on the shore of Tiber, on a moonlit romantic evening, in the company of a strange woman. No, the story does not evolve into an Italian love comedy, since Karen saved your drowning butt and asks you to go explore some mysterious ruins in search of another soul that was fished out by our saviour from the very same river. If you get past the strange hobbies of Karen you have to choose yourself a background, each one conferring a unique advantage, and make your way through ominous ruins full of gold statues.  

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Despite all the warnings you will step through a time portal, and you will find yourself in a dark corner of the Ancient Roman Empire. It is a place that you cannot escape, a place that is the playground of an unknown deity making the whole community to pay for the sins of an individual by turning everyone in gold statues. The human nature is immutable so in front of this huge threat they are still scheming and, in some cases, apparently the inhabitants managed to make a fool out of the supreme being.

It will be your main task to unravel all the plots, solve all the side dramas and prove that most of the inhabitants of the city are nowhere near as nice as they try to look. Everyone has its secrets and hidden agenda, and you will need several trips through time to figure out everything. The good news is that if you messed up you can tumble again through the time continuum and try again, keeping the knowledge and items you already uncovered. This way you can solve time sensitive quests and have the freedom to break the Golden Rule until you manage to get things right.

It will take you roughly 8-10 hours to figure out how you can leave behind this cursed place. You can still die in the game if you are not careful, and the fact that each time you start again the inhabitants will not remember you may be a slight hinderance. But this leaves you plenty of room to figure out peaceful solutions to the challenges of the game. All you need is patience to observe and figure out the daily routine of each character. Then with the help of a bit of logic, you can figure out the various missions.

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You can sprint, run sneak around or even use a weapon, but mainly these are secondary mechanics, since at its foundation The Forgotten City is an adventure game, relying mainly on the use of your own neurons. There are some horror parts, but they are accompanied by numerous warnings and even the possibility to skip them by choosing a different path. Unfortunately, these parts are half baked, since the combat and the AI of the opponents seem to be rudimentary at best. They do not present a real challenge and instead of adding to the game experience, they leave a somewhat bitter taste.

The Forgotten City despite being an adventure game does not lack replay value, since it has no less than four different endings. To get the happiest ending of them all you will have to solve all the side missions and explore every dark secret of the game. The reward for achieving the hardest ending is to discover the story in its entirety and understand the reason for going through so much trouble.

Even if it would have tried to The Forgotten City cannot deny its relationship with Skyrim: from the visual style, the design of the various locations, the interaction with the NPCs, the performance of the voice actors… everything reminds you of the legendary Elder Scrolls game. Overall, the game looks nice, there is a lot of small details, and although it is not perfect there are no big issues to break the immersion. The voice actors do a great job in general and the dialogues with some exceptions feel natural and well thought out.

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The Good

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