Forgotten Anne Review

Forgotten Anne is excellent, plain and simple. The story is enticing, and the voice acting is actually very good, the gameplay runs ridiculously smoothly (at least on my console) and it is just all round an RPG game worth playing. It’s not like Dragon Age or any big name triple A RPG, but it is a decent crack at it, you’ve got options to pick what you want to say, which can change the outcome of your character and other ‘Forgotlings’ lives. So, if you like things like ‘Salt and Sanctuary’ or fancy playing something like ‘Fallout Shelter’ with an actual interesting story you can get behind, then pick up a copy of Forgotten Anne.

This is honestly one of the best games I’ve ever played that isn’t mainstream. The story works extremely well, the concept is something entirely new with the plot following Anne, a human, who has found herself forgotten (surprise) in an alternate reality where all things forgotten, find themselves; such as odd socks, old clocks and purses.  The story keeps you intrigued through the good graphics and beautiful art style and keeps you wanting more from the game and what it gives. The game provides you with choices for dialogue, which you learn very early on, and can affect the story and who lives and dies and so on. So, what you say and do matters. The choices are not direct like some choice-based games, such as Tell-tales The Walking Dead Game, or anything by Tell-tale for that matter, and while I love those games, I like the subtlety of the choices and their impact in this game.

The game provides puzzles to solve in order to progress or even just to uncover more story or gain an achievement. These puzzles in games like this can often feel out-of-place but this game does not have this issue. Forgotten Anne does puzzles well as they are always relevant, for example, stopping a train leading to a rather large puzzle involving overheating an engine. Not only are the puzzles well done, but they are also relatively difficult and tough to solve but not too hard for you to rage quit and throw your controller at the wall. The puzzles are also interesting and leave you with a sense of achievement once you have completed them. The controls are also a major pat of this and in my opinion the controls were brilliant. Yes, for some reason jump was mapped to the B button, but that’s fine, I can deal with it.

The game introduces a new mechanic and idea in form of ‘Arche’. Anne can gather a ball of this energy and put it into other things to make them work and do things to progress to the next stage or to solve a puzzle. This idea is the root of most of the puzzles and is always the solution to these puzzles. The controls are not chunky like many games of Forgotten Anne’s sort, but they are smooth and there has never been a technical error or even a lag when I have been playing the game. Which only adds further to the overall impact of the game and how good it really is.

However, one thing I think this game could have done better is to introduce Anne as a more likeable character, I suppose it all depends on how you play your character but even if you play her nicely she still doesn’t have that much substance behind her, which is disappointing. The lack of characterisation in Anne is upsetting because the game is very good, this seems to be the only thing to let it down. The game does have replay value as you obviously have the different choices in dialogue to what you said in your first playthrough, there are also achievements so for completionists this game is a must have! The achievements are not obvious ones too, so exploration and trying everything in this game is valuable to get the most for your money.

Overall, Forgotten Anne is a brilliant game that deserves recognition, you can replay this at least twice, getting good value for money. It is beautiful to look at and the story and concept is something new and exciting for gamers. As well as this, the game promises good games and hours of fun with the puzzles and achievement hunting. This game is worth it.

REVIEW CODE: A FREE Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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