Reviewed on: PC
Code supplied by the publisher.
After a year spent in ruined cities, blood-soaked bad guys, and various flavors of apocalypse, Forever Ago arrives like someone opening a window. This is a warm, unhurried, deeply sincere game, and I didn't realize how much I wanted one until I was an hour in and I was relaxed. There's no grand threat here, no ticking clock. It asks you to spend time with people and pay attention, and that turns out to be plenty.
The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. It's genuinely lovely, the kind of score you'd listen to outside the game, and it knows exactly when to swell and when to get out of the way. The voice acting is nearly flawless too, which matters more than ever in a game built almost entirely on conversation. Performances land with real feeling rather than the stiff line-reading that sinks a lot of smaller narrative games. When the emotional beats arrive, they land because the people delivering them sound like people.
It isn't flawless. There are stretches in the middle where the pacing sags and the plot meanders without much forward pull, and I caught myself with a wandering mind a bit. A tighter edit would have helped, but the game earns enough points that those stretches feel like a small price rather than a dealbreaker.
Verdict
Before you scream “Old grandpa sim!”, Forever Ago is a game with real heart, and it touched and tugged some heartstrings more than I would have guessed it would. If you've been craving something gentle and well-made amid all the grim, this is a solid one. Bring tissues.
