[b]A well-written, time-loop-based narrative where your choices are everything[/b]
I went in almost entirely blind, thinking this would be a first-person puzzle adventure, but it's really more of a first-person mystery. It's a time loop game about a lost civilization, with 4 different endings.
Bulk of the gameplay is talking to NPCs to learn what they know and try to influence their choices, exploring, observing, and that Groundhog Day thing where you can experiment without permanent consequences and quickly/optimally resolve all situations because you already know exactly what's going to happen and what does/doesn't work.
It's got shades of Majora's Mask, in the way your interaction with different NPCs has ripple effects that either unlocks or locks you out of different choices in that loop.
I only have a couple minor complaints, which both relate to the action elements of the game. Each time the loop is coming to an end, (spoilers for loop mechanics only) [spoiler]you have to race back to a specific spot in town where the portal back in time always appears, while angels of death stationed all over town use you for target practice. For the player-character background I chose, as well as one of the two other options I could have chosen, you have no weapon or defense that's effective against them, and you can only take about 3 hits before dying. If you die without making it back to the reset location, you'll lose any physical items you have collected on that loop (which you'd have been able to carry through the portal with you if you had made it back).[/spoiler]
There's also an optional side quest that's in a survival horror style, and the reward is an item that lets you access locked areas without needing keys, by granting you the ability to use your environment in platform-y ways.
I'm just going to say it: [b]Games that control the way this game does should not have action or platforming sequences.[/b] Nobody expects a Myst-like to have super-smooth, responsive controls - you just need to be able to accomplish basic movement in 3D space without getting stuck on or falling through the scenery, and it's fine. That bar is significantly higher for action and platforming, and while the sequences here don't rise to the level of being outright frustrating, they also don't feel [i]good[/i] - especially the platform-y bits in the side quest mission. Luckily it's a very small part of the game, even if you do the optional mission.
As a whole, the game was so much deeper and more engaging and well-written than I was expecting. The characters, the world-building, the weaving of real historical fact and moral philosophy 101 so seamlessly with the actual game mechanics. [b]It's one of those games like Stardew Valley or Outer Wilds where you can [i]feel[/i] how much care and passion went into making it.[/b] You can tell it was someone's baby, a labor of love they were glad to perform, not a commercial product that employees punched a clock to deliver to client specifications.
I saw two of the endings, including the "canonical" or "best" ending. The canon ending was [b]very[/b] satisfying. A lot of mystery games build up a lot of intrigue and mystery during the game, and then deliver these sort of anti-climactic endings that feel like they just hand-waved away all that mystery for the sake of rushing things to a too-tidy conclusion that just makes you think, "Okay." When you had been expecting or hoping for an ending that was going to make you think, "Whooaa. No way!"
The ending of The Forgotten City was the opposite of that. It felt logical, it felt earned, and most importantly, it felt like an appropriate reward for the investment I made in pursuing it.
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Played on a Windows 11 PC with an RTX 5070, Ryzen 7 9700X, and 32GB RAM. No crashes or noticeable performance issues.
