![]() ![]() Granted, it isn’t really about action sequences, combat, or platforming – it has all that, but it’s only sprinkled in at appropriate times to improve the pace, and never outstays its welcome. The Forgotten City has some combat too, but it’s minuscule and quite simple overall. You can conveniently send Galerius, the most well-meaning yet tragically impressionable man on the planet, to run off and do each of your previously completed quests for you, bringing you back up to speed every time you need to restart. ![]() Retracing your steps each day might sound tedious, but another great touch is that you don’t need to redo every quest each time. The world resets to its original state but you keep everything in your inventory, allowing tangible progress from day-to-day and leading to some interesting conversations, such as how you know a character is about to do something or how you have a certain item in your possession that you couldn’t possibly have without stealing it. Every time you break the Golden Rule by, say, killing somebody or stealing an item, you must run back to the starting portal and begin the day anew. In case you do turn all your suspects to gold, The Forgotten City makes genius use of a time loop mechanic to keep your investigation going smoothly. Those things arguably wouldn’t even fit into what The Forgotten City is trying to do anyway, as its dialogue is tightly written and filled with mysteries to piece together, and your decisions carry more than enough weight as-is. While I was initially a bit disappointed to see that there were no RPG systems to use during dialogue, especially after a game like Disco Elysium showed just how interesting they could be, the conversations are very engaging without the need to roll skill checks. Each person has their own motives, problems, and opinions of one another and of the Golden Rule itself to discover, with standouts like the conniving Aurelia being particularly fun to talk to. The absolute best part of The Forgotten City is its excellently written characters. The Forgotten City is positively dripping with brain teasing moral quandaries as a result – without spoiling anything, there are points where you have to break the Golden Rule, as well as times where you must stop it from being broken, even if it would mean helping innocent people out of awful predicaments. The city’s least savory denizens use loopholes, social engineering, and deception to entrap and purposefully mislead one another, skirting the Golden Rule altogether. But you don’t need constant combat to make it delightfully fascinating to unravel each of the city’s many delicate layers, and the deeper you go the more obvious it becomes that a life without clear crime is no utopia. “The many shall suffer for the sins of the one.” This is the fabled Golden Rule that serves as the central focal point of The Forgotten City’s story, and it dictates that you and the city’s 23 or so residents can’t steal from or attack another human, lest the city’s guardian statues spring to life and methodically turn each citizen into solid gold - trapping them forever. ![]()
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