After two full playthroughs, multiple re-dos of different parts of the game, and almost 44 hours invested (a good part of that was time spent AFK as I tend to forget to close my game) - I'm happy to finally provide you with my review of Forgotton Anne.

Where to start?

The game is absolutely beautiful - there is no other way to put it. It looks like a Studio Ghibli movie made playable. From the very beginning to the very end, this hand-animated gem will leave you astounded at its beauty. As you move from warmly lit interiors to the cold blue light outside, from busier areas to lonely streets, the quality never falters. The game is also a ton of fun, and the story is interesting and whimsical. You meet a talking shoe just longing to feel a foot again, a crabby-ass teddy bear smoking a cigar, a drunken barrel singing in the rain, and a voodoo doll with a good heart and a forward thinking mind. My first playthrough took just over 16 hours, and I was trying to complete as much of it as possible in one go. I then spent quite a long time redoing different parts of the game for achievements before realizing that one of the achievements would require a complete second playthrough anyway. So what was I to do? I played through it again. The second time, I kind of just rushed through. I knew what to do, I knew what to expect, and I knew where to go. That playthrough took just over 6 hours. The game honestly feels a lot longer than it is - in a good way. I spent days playing it, and enjoyed every minute.

The Story

Forgotton Anne centers around... Anne, the Enforcer, a young woman living in a world of lost and forgotten things. Raised in The Forgotten Lands since she was a baby, Anne knows nothing of the Ether - the world from which all forgotten things come - save what she has been told by Master Bonku. The elderly Bonku is both a father-figure and a boss to her, and Anne does what she needs to in order to please him and support his building of the Ether Bridge, their pathway back to the human world. Many Forgotlings also celebrate the building of this bridge, longing to return to the human world and their owners - longing to be remembered.

Still, not everyone supports this plan, and a group of rebels form in an effort to stop the Ether Bridge from being completed and thwart the plans made by Bonku. At first a small enough rebellion, they eventually cause enough damage that it becomes clear they need to be dealt with. Anne, as the Enforcer, sets out to stop the rebels, keep the peace, and see that the Ether Bridge is completed in time.

And how does she do it?

Anne wields the Arca, a mysterious halfglove and weapon that allows her to harness the power of Anima, the energy that flows through the Forgotten Lands. She can power generators, redirect energy streams, control lights... and siphon the very energy that keeps the Forgotlings alive. This earns her the deference of some, who refer to her respectfully as Madame Enforcer, and the ire and fear of others, who call her the Soul Snatcher.

The Gameplay

The thought that came to me first is that it's kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book made into a game, with less pathways to go down. You have choices to make, usually dialogue-related, and those choices impact both the story and your achievements. You have to continue to make choices, some of them quite hard, until the very end. In fact, your last action in the game is a choice - and a rather huge one at that.

It's also a puzzle-platformer... less emphasis on the puzzle, more emphasis on the platforming. The puzzles are on the easier side, and almost all of them involve Anima and the Arca. Anne can't use the Arca for anything but distilling (siphoning energy from Forgotlings) unless the Arca is charged and, actually, distilling them is one way to charge it. With a fully charged Arca, Anne can solve puzzles that involve moving items around the surface of a door, or alter the power currents in certain rooms to open doors, turn on lights, etc. The platforming is more involved, and some jumps are pretty difficult to make. There is one particularly long platforming event later in the game that had me pulling my hair out (I'm really bad at jumping) but even that is remembered fondly now that I've completed it... twice. And speaking of jumping. Early in the game, Anne unlocks a set of mechanical wings that allow her to jump higher and farther but - you guessed it - using them requires that the Arca be charged. Basically, you want to have a fully charged Arca at all times - except when you don't have a fully charged Arca. Make sense? Good. Because that's basically your gameplay.

Forgotton Anne is about the animation and the story. The gameplay itself is rather simple. Make choices, solve puzzles, jump around. Just make sure that you have fun doing it.

The Achievements

There are 33 of them, most of them *hidden*. I'm not going to list them here because you can easily find them online, but I will say that some of them are kind of tricky to get. True Collector requires that you find all the Mementos in the game, and Empathic and Pacifist cannot be achieved by replaying certain chapters, so if you miss them you WILL have to replay the entire game. All the others are either story-related or can still be found without starting over from the beginning.

True Collector is the one that took me the longest to get - replaying the entire game to achieve Pacifist took less time than finding all the Mementos did. That said, I started playing the game on release day when there wasn't all that much information out there. Chances are good that by the time you're done reading this, someone will have a guide up explaining where all the Mementos are. That person will not be me. ＼(★^∀^★)／ Find them yourselves!

(I kid, I kid - if anyone needs help, just send me a message).


And that's really it. The game was simple and fantastic, and I'm definitely going to keep my eye on ThroughLine Games because I have high hopes that anything else they make will be just as good. Huge props to Square Enix for publishing this title - good choice of games to affix your name to. Forgotton Anne is definitely on my list of favourite games now and I'm absolutely positive that if you play it, it will be on yours too. Give it a chance, and enjoy!