I was pretty underwhelmed by The Forgotten City.
I love narrative- and character-driven games, but The Forgotten City just didn't do it to me. The premise of time-warping back to an Ancient Roman city is perfectly in-line with my tastes, but the setting was far too fantasy-based for me and not nearly as historically based as I'd have liked. The setting did not feel like a "city" to me whatsoever; more like a very limited arena in which to interact with a select few NPCs.
The game's pacing felt terribly off to me. On arrival I felt a bit overwhelmed with all of the people I was sent to speak with, and did not feel the strong pull of any narrative hook investing me in any of their struggles. As I grinded through and dug a bit deeper I began to feel more invested, but this took several hours of running around and clicking through dialogue that I didn't find very interesting. It was a struggle to get through the game's opening hours, as I was simply wandering around, talking to NPCs, with no real investment as to why I was even in this artificial-feeling place, with these artificial-feeling NPCs. This problem compounded when proceeding through one of the game's "dungeons", in which you first begin to engage with the game's combat system. To put it simply; it's not good. The developers do their best to work in creative solutions to being confronted with enemies, but in the end, it's a relatively simple bow mechanic, enemies which react in very few ways, and corridors which don't divert very far. There are also some brief platforming sections which I found horribly tedious and unengaging. I believe this would be a far, far better game if there was no combat whatsoever and it relied more on better execution of dialogue and characters.
Before my purchase I had heard a great deal about how great the character writing is, but unfortunately I can't agree. The effort is there, but the characters feel far more like video game characters than real people. Most of them will have a very obvious quirk, and little else aside from that. I wasn't really touched or motivated by any of their needs or desires, and the way the game tasks you with speaking to them all right off the bat felt a bit clumsy and unnatural to me. Rather than entering a real city, I felt overwhelmingly like I was entering a staged video game world where each of the characters was a cardboard cut-out, spitting lines at me. One character is a stoic, and quotes regularly from famous stoics. One character is a gladiator, and is predictably brutish and reliant on violence. A few are Christians. A couple are homosexuals. One's a humble, down to earth farmer. One young woman is relatively stuck-up and arrogant. On paper, all of these are fine, but they ought to be treated just as starting points for putting interesting twists on these characters and challenging them; pushing them further toward change. However these facets are really all there are to these characters, rendering them rather token and uninteresting, so I left The Forgotten City a bit puzzled as to how the character writing garnered so much praise. Maybe I'm missing something.
The most intriguing the game gets is in how it facilitates the player's freedom in solving its problems and experimenting with new attempted solutions. It must have been a real pain to try and program these quests, many of which intersect with one another, and may be done in any order. I give the developers lots of respect for that. The game worked perfectly for me: No broken quest flags or bugs, and that's significant.
I hate crapping on indie games because I love the hard work indie developers put into creating things that new and unique like The Forgotten City, but this one just didn't connect with me for whatever reason. That being said, I don't regret the purchase and I'm happy to keep supporting indie ventures like this, and I do think the development team behind this game has interesting goals and motivations and I look forward to seeing what they do next.
The game's pacing felt terribly off to me. On arrival I felt a bit overwhelmed with all of the people I was sent to speak with, and did not feel the strong pull of any narrative hook investing me in any of their struggles. As I grinded through and dug a bit deeper I began to feel more invested, but this took several hours of running around and clicking through dialogue that I didn't find very interesting. It was a struggle to get through the game's opening hours, as I was simply wandering around, talking to NPCs, with no real investment as to why I was even in this artificial-feeling place, with these artificial-feeling NPCs. This problem compounded when proceeding through one of the game's "dungeons", in which you first begin to engage with the game's combat system. To put it simply; it's not good. The developers do their best to work in creative solutions to being confronted with enemies, but in the end, it's a relatively simple bow mechanic, enemies which react in very few ways, and corridors which don't divert very far. There are also some brief platforming sections which I found horribly tedious and unengaging. I believe this would be a far, far better game if there was no combat whatsoever and it relied more on better execution of dialogue and characters.
Before my purchase I had heard a great deal about how great the character writing is, but unfortunately I can't agree. The effort is there, but the characters feel far more like video game characters than real people. Most of them will have a very obvious quirk, and little else aside from that. I wasn't really touched or motivated by any of their needs or desires, and the way the game tasks you with speaking to them all right off the bat felt a bit clumsy and unnatural to me. Rather than entering a real city, I felt overwhelmingly like I was entering a staged video game world where each of the characters was a cardboard cut-out, spitting lines at me. One character is a stoic, and quotes regularly from famous stoics. One character is a gladiator, and is predictably brutish and reliant on violence. A few are Christians. A couple are homosexuals. One's a humble, down to earth farmer. One young woman is relatively stuck-up and arrogant. On paper, all of these are fine, but they ought to be treated just as starting points for putting interesting twists on these characters and challenging them; pushing them further toward change. However these facets are really all there are to these characters, rendering them rather token and uninteresting, so I left The Forgotten City a bit puzzled as to how the character writing garnered so much praise. Maybe I'm missing something.
The most intriguing the game gets is in how it facilitates the player's freedom in solving its problems and experimenting with new attempted solutions. It must have been a real pain to try and program these quests, many of which intersect with one another, and may be done in any order. I give the developers lots of respect for that. The game worked perfectly for me: No broken quest flags or bugs, and that's significant.
I hate crapping on indie games because I love the hard work indie developers put into creating things that new and unique like The Forgotten City, but this one just didn't connect with me for whatever reason. That being said, I don't regret the purchase and I'm happy to keep supporting indie ventures like this, and I do think the development team behind this game has interesting goals and motivations and I look forward to seeing what they do next.
⭐⭐
Playtime: 7 hours
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