Welcome to our walkthrough for the mystery adventure game The Forgotten City! This guide will lead you to the “best” ending (of 4), and therefore we encourage you to go ahead and try to complete the game at least once for yourself — the mystery is half the fun, after all!
That being said, some players don’t have the time or the energy to dig into every nook and cranny of a game, and they deserve the good ending too. With that in mind, we’ve created a walkthrough that should guide you as efficiently as possible to the best ending.
Note that in order to better accommodate people having the guide up on their second monitor, this guide has long stretches without photos wherever we believe text directions will suffice. If you find anything confusing, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, and we’ll do our best to either give you directions, or else update that section with a helpful image!
Guide Navigation
Basic Settings and Tips
It’s important to know that you can turn a crosshair, and the objective markers, on or off in the Interface section of the Settings menu. The crosshair makes aiming the bow much easier, while the Objective Markers naturally makes it simpler to find your way to your next task.
It’s also good to remember that at any point while playing, you can press [X] and some golden butterflies will guide you to your next objective (assuming you have one selected, and it isn’t hidden).
How to Use this Guide
This section contains minor spoilers for The Forgotten City
This guide will only cover necessary dialogue, which means you’ll miss out on a lot of background and fun details if you only choose the dialogue options the guide tells you to. The main reason the guide is built this way is for people to experience the full story as quickly as possible, and to help people who are stuck while progressing.
Thanks to the nature of the time-loop in the game, if you accidentally choose a dialogue option that changes your path or upsets a character, you can easily break the Golden Rule by stealing something or shooting someone with your bow, and then head through the portal to reset the time loop.
Since you keep all the items you gain (and Galerius can do all your chores for you when the time loop resets) you don’t lose much or any progress when you reset the loop. Therefore, I encourage you to chat people up! This game is built around it’s characters and their philosophies, so you’ll cheat yourself out of a large part of the experience if you focus on going quickly to the ending.
Time Loop Tricks
Anything you do, whether it be speaking to a character or stealing an item, will stay with you when you go back through the portal and reset the time loop after you or someone else breaks the Golden Rule. This is important to remember when you’re trying to figure out the game’s many puzzles.
A Timely Warning
Unlike some RPGs, where all the NPCs just wait around for the hero to show up and talk to them, time seems to pass in The Forgotten City. What this means is, if you go through the time loop, and then stand there staring at Galerius for 20 minutes while you take the dog for a walk, you might continue with the walkthrough to find that NPCs aren’t where they should be. Make sure you pause the game with [ESC] if you need to take a break for any reason.
While we’re giving out warnings, you should also remember to save often. I suggest quick-saving before every conversation you begin with [F5] (quick-load is[F9], btw), since if you accidentally pick the wrong dialog option, you can be locked out from certain paths until you restart the time loop, which is a real pain in the natis (even if there are no lasting consequences).
It’s also good to know that, since time passes while the game is running, you can find yourself at the end of the day while completing a task. Someone breaks the Golden Rule at the end of the day, so you’ll have to run back to the shrine where the portal is, and then pick your task up where you left off, whenever that happens.
Thanks!! jolly good walkthrough
Thanks Jean Paul, I’m glad to hear it was helpful!
Thank you, this is very helpful! I am currently playing the game and was getting a bit stuck/frustrated.
Happy we could help! TFC can definitely have some tricky bits.