The Sinking City

After about 24 hours, I can say that I have finished The Sinking City to 100%; all the endings, all the side cases, everything, and although it is a game that has its flaws (such as those that I will discuss below) the whole package I think is more than recommendable for fans of Lovecraftian literature, but what about for the rest? It's a bit more complicated...

Starting with the positive points, The Sinking City has a stellar setting, script and art direction, it's genuinely excellent; throughout my journey through Oakmont there were quite a few moments where I stood simply admiring the scenery, the decrepitness of the place, the grotesqueness of its corners... I could almost smell the sea and the rot as I was playing.

The masterful way in which the guys at Frogwares have spun the whole script (at times slightly predictable if you have already read the bibliography of the aforementioned Lovecraft) is really commendable, at no time did I feel that the plot was thinning. Most of the Side Cases are, likewise, very well written! This is one of the few games where I've read absolutely every newspaper clipping and lore memo I've come across.

Now, about the worst parts... it's more than clear that there was an intention somewhere to make this game last "a bit longer" than the original script gave for it, and that's why we have good Side Cases, mediocre Side Cases and absolutely terrible Side Cases that have no reason to exist other than to artificially lengthen a game that could have lasted about 5 hours less, and I'm not talking about Side Cases where the narrative is terrible, I'm talking about literal Fetch Quests throughout the city that reward you with absolutely nothing and you have to do them twice!

"Functional Brain Cylinders" and "Defunct Brain Cylinders" is basically the same horrible side quest.... one is in the base game and the other is in the Merciful Madness DLC, then there's "All That Glitters" in the original game and "Fool's Gold", which is exactly the same, and in the same DLC as "Defunct Brain Cylinders". "Mystic Tomes" is also on a par with those previously mentioned. It's a very poor excuse to artificially lengthen the hours of gameplay, and although I did them (in the hope of receiving a reward in the form of lore, if nothing else) I regret it.

As another of the negative points that have dragged down my experience is the entire combat system (and tied to it, the crafting system). This game would have benefited greatly from NOT having combat or crafting, as simple as that, since the one it has is clunky, slow, and is implemented half-heartedly, making each encounter unpleasant and practically from the first encounter you decide not to fight again, running and leaving the enemies behind.

As a last negative detail, after several hours playing the game my right index finger got stiff from having to constantly press the trigger to sprint, couldn't it have been a toggle? Charles' movement speed is very slow, so sprinting everywhere becomes absolutely more than necessary, and ends up being painful.

Having said all that, I still highly recommend The Sinking City to any fan of the cosmic horror genre, Lovecraft mythology or fans of games with an oppressive atmosphere and rich narrative.

I'm looking forward to the recently announced The Sinking City 2, and I can only encourage Frogwares with their next projects and thank you to those of you who have read me so far.

I almost didn't buy it after reading the flood of negative reviews, what I found is a lovingly crafted atmosphere along with rich storytelling and immersive gameplay.
This game has extremely dark themes; self harm, family abuse, racial injustice etc. On the other hand there is also some clever dark humour.
The genre is a mix of Detective, RPG and Survival Horror. I guess some of the negativity comes from people who only wanted one of those things.
A common complaint seems to be "The Combat" and I have no idea what their problem is, I found it to be a very simple and intuitive experience with satisfying gunplay. At first it can be intense but is very easy to figure out and it is not punishing at all, if you do somehow die it just reloads the last checkpoint which is never far away.
The concept of limited resources is executed perfectly imo, I always seem to have just enough bullets to survive a situation and it feels rewarding to be prepared, scouring for more when needed. Venturing into barricaded streets marked as "infested area" is one way to find more but is completely optional so it's funny to see that complained about too. You can also earn from side missions (they're actually good too) and search any empty houses you come across.
The only really bad thing in this game is "Optimization", it lags sharply at some moments but at least stabilizes itself pretty quickly. I can see how frustrating it is hand-in-hand with having a combat system at all, since it is prone to happen when a new area and several enemies spawn all at once, but I see it as it's own separate issue, besides it never actually caused me to die.
The Detective work in this game is generally pretty easy but not always. It lets go of your hand sometimes and you just have to read through the clues you collected so far and piece together where to investigate next e.g. you may need to look up a birth record or business address at the newspaper or city hall archives, I felt a real sense of accomplishment in figuring these things out.
Naturally this type of game requires some patience and attention span, to fully appreciate the depths of the story and cases. For me the most tedious part is to go over some crime scenes with a fine-toothed comb to collect every clue, but at least the game tells you once everything has been found in an area.
Traversal can also be daunting at first but gets easier when you find all the phone booths to "fast travel" between, it's such a detailed environment anyway that it can be nice to just soak in on a boat ride or jog while thinking about your next step.
In 30 hours I beat my first play-through of the main story alongside about 7 side missions (it's a good idea to multi-task them)
However this is one of those games that doesn't return you to the open world after the final mission, so make sure to do a manual save a bit before the finale.
I will also give it a replay anyway since there are many multiple choice moments with interesting plot results.
In conclusion I highly recommend giving The Sinking City a chance if it calls to you.

This game has many positive sides and many, well, less positive ones. On one side here's an engaging investigative story set in Lovecraft's Mythos world, and it's definitely worth your time. There are interesting characters and a very eerie flooded city to explore; add to this plenty of grotesque, eldritch creatures eager to bite your ass and a mystery you want to solve. On the other hand, despite some good visual effects and a compelling atmosphere, graphics are dated and the city feels too big, Bilbo would say like butter scraped over too much bread. Too many assets are used and re-used everywhere and after a while every house/warehouse has the same, identical structure. This grows old soon enough and is not really motivating me to finish all side quests. Speaking of those, some of them are interesting and really add flavour to the game, but many are just fetch quests in those usual, repetitive places. In any case, despite evident technical flaws (due to the small size of the dev team too), this game is worth your time: if you're a Lovecraft fan don't think it twice, and just get it.

Scratches my Lovecraft itch.
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Frogwares has recently gained full licencing rights to "The SInking City" and a big overhaul update is coming in late February (2024).

A bloody good AA game with a fun detective mechanic. You have to collect evidence and then deduce the perpetrator, location and/or next move; the game doesn't hold your hand.
Here's the template:
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Mehh, nothing special
☑ Good
☐ Very good
☐ So fun!
---{ Story }---
☐ No story
☐ Not great
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Captivating
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Graphics }---
☐ MS-DOS
☐ Bad
☐ Decent
☐ Good
☑ Beautiful
☐ Masterpiece
☐ You forget what reality is
---{ Audio }---
☐ I wish I was deaf
☐ Bad
☐ Not too bad
☐ Decent
☑ Good
☐ Very good
☐ Eargasm
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Moderate
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Unforgiving
☐ Difficult
☐ Souls-like
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Only if you care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Average grind level
☐ A bit grindy sometimes
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ Depends on you
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ Infested and broken
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Price }---
☐ You could also just burn your money
☐ Not recommended
☐ If you have a spare coin
☑ If it's on sale
☐ Worth the price
☐ It's free!
---{ Audience }---
☐ Everyone
☐ Kids mainly
☑ Teens and older
☐ Adults only
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The game has a huge open world city but large sections have nothing to interact with. I found this frustrating at first. However, once I realised how the case-and-address system worked, it made a lot more sense!

The story similarly is slow to start but once it picks up it's actually pretty good. There are a couple of meaningful choices, one or two of which feel a bit forced, but overall add to the experience.

The mechanics (combat, sixth sense, etc.) are very simple but integrate well.

Yeah, I got my money's worth.

Finally Frogwares got the rights back and I could play this game! Lovecraftian, so no way I could ignore this.
The start was rough. The default FOV is horrible, especially on a wide screen monitor. Bordering on unplayable. After some searching and file editing I got a much better FOV set up, and it's like a new game.
I really enjoyed exploring the city. The districts look different and have some unique locations. The graphics are OK by modern standards, but the animations could've used some work. NPCs are often clipping through objects and bumping into things. The voice acting can be amateurish at times, but otherwise the sound design is good. Creaking floorboards and splashes in abandoned buildings along with other noises. The music is excellent. The dark, ambient jazzy tunes were very enjoyable.
The detective parts are a bit repetitive, but the best content the game has. I played on "detective" difficulty and enjoyed it. It didn't have much hand holding for investigating the cases, but then again most scenarios were obvious enough that no help would have been needed. You also have a camera, but I was disappointed because of how little it was used.
There are two kinds of side quests. The simple detective cases usually have a nice story and are therefore fun to play through. There are also search quests, where you are given a list of around ten addresses. Each of these is an abandoned building containing an item you must get, and spawn enemies soon after entering. Not much story in these, I didn't finish the last too lists I had because they were not fun to complete.
Combat is very basic and too frequent. I was playing carefully and didn't really have problems with resources, but it was still annoying when enemies started spawning.
Despite being lovecraftian, the game has very little horror elements. You are killing grotesque monsters and suffer visual hallucinations, but that's pretty much it. No jump scares, but not much of a tense atmosphere either. The diving scenes have some good thalassophobia inducing stuff, but there's nothing similar on the streets of Oakmont.
It is pretty repetitive overall, but I can recommend the game for the fans of Lovecraft. Just stick to the main quest and the more interesting side quests. And maybe lower the combat difficulty.