The Sinking City

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.

Hey, you. Yes, you. I know you're rifling through Steam reviews wondering if this title is worth your time. You're a cosmic horror fan. You crave the unknowable, the unfathomable. You chew through horror fiction hoping to find something - anything - that will scratch that itch for Lovecraft. Your love of weird has you forever chasing the dragon across books, games, and films...except that metaphorical dragon is a 100 foot tall Great Old One with an octopus head.
You know this isn't an action game, but that doesn't deter you. It's glitchy, yes, but you're not here for cutting edge gameplay. You've showed up for the atmosphere, the writing, and the infinite malignity of the stars. And yes. It delivers these in spades.
"The Sinking City" is messy and sometimes tedious, but its shortcomings are worth putting up with for a fantastic voyage into a very accurate and immersive Lovecraftian vision.

There's a whole lot of bad rep in this game, the dev and publisher got a fight.
You should probably buy the game on the dev's site but either way it's a masterpiece of a game, it has many great investigations and it's a beautiful Lovecraftian world.
PS: Frogwares, you are amazing.

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).

This one is a doozy. As always, every judgement you read here is subjective.
The short version: I've had a lot of fun with The Sinking City (TSC for short).
The long version - that's the rest of this review.
TSC has a story that is at times confusing, strange, but for me, always captivating. I'm not big on Lovecraft's work, but for those who are, the game could potentially hold much more value. There's secret societies, malevolent monsters, unsettling myths, nightmares, visions and all sorts of strange occurrences. Best of all, you get your hands dirty with all of them. They're not just lingering distantly in the background, so thematically, the game is absolutely on point.
Visually, much the same - the graphics are not stunning but the art direction and style is just weird, unsettling and creepy enough to keep this constant atmosphere of unease hanging over the more tense parts of the story. Of course, it's not constantly like this otherwise the game would become suffocating to play. You see touches of elegance, beauty and society in the midst of an otherwise barnacled, run-down city with basically everything fallen apart or in the process of doing so. However, lots of interiors are re-used, leading me to wonder whether they could have made do with a much smaller, but more uniquely designed and densely packed game world. It would have saved all the running around, which is not fun unless you enjoy taking in the sights (which I did, so I didn't mind).
Mechanics-wise, it's pretty good. There are no quest markers, which is lovely - every location is roughly specified by a road address and you have to locate and find what you need. Few games bother doing this, and I'm glad they tried to make it more investigative. Speaking of which, the investigative elements are great. You have to actually search through crime scenes, note clues, and through some "premonition" ability discover what happened. Then you can come to different outcomes in each case based on your interpretation of the clues - there's no right or wrong answer, no fail state, which is brilliant. It is a genuinely good investigative gameplay loop, where I knew exactly what was coming but I still enjoyed doing it, since it's so deliciously involved. Full props for this.
The combat is not great until the end - at least, that's how it was for me. There's not too much mechanically wrong with it, just that it's tedious and not really "fun". TSC comes as a clear recommendation to anyone who enjoyed Vampyr, but the combat in that game - while tough - was utterly fair, challenging and fun. I tried to avoid combat in Vampyr when I could because of fear that the opponent would be too strong. Here, I've avoided combat whenever possible (in the early game) because it's just not fun. Later on, once you get a bit more competent and powerful, it's actually enjoyable.
RPG mechanics are next to meaningless in terms of variety of possible builds, though I imagine the game was not designed to offer different build options - you can pretty much unlock every skill tree completely with a regular playthrough and minimal side-questing. With that said, some skills do make a marked difference in gameplay and that's always good to see (e.g. the skill that sometimes lets you save materials when crafting. Came in handy more than once).
Speaking of which, the crafting is serviceable, and loot respawns whenever you move across locations so every time I find some stash I mark it on the map and revisit the area when needed. All cool.
What I really enjoyed is how the sanity mechanic is used. The player character, Charles Reed, suffers from disturbing visions (e.g. eldritch monsters attacking him, his own body hanging, etcetc) and every time you are in a region with otherworldly influences, your sanity starts dropping and these visions appear on screen as overlays while the screen as a whole swims around, distorted. It's beautifully done, though you can turn off these effects as far as I know, if they cause any epileptic reactions, for example.
The ending is lacklustre. But did you really come to this game for the ending? Nah, it's really the journey that counts. Reed is a monotone but fascinating character and I really came to enjoy his perspective on things - allowing us to actually connect with his detective abilities really makes him that much more relatable. His journey is enjoyable, macabre and overall, defeinitely worth your time in my opinion.
The side characters are all equally interesting - the voice acting is fantastic, and there's rarely a dull moment when you're interacting with a character. My only wish would have been to see some real consequences of our in-game decisions (which usually come at the end of each case). The aforementioned Vampyr did this fantastically by re-evaluating every district's "Health" based on our quest decisions, our choices of who to embrace and so on. Not just that, this Health actively affected the gameplay experience, as lower Health districts spawned more and more challenging enemies.
With that said, it took me about 20 hours to complete the game without doing any of the side quests, which I expect complete sometime in the future during another playthrough. I enjoyed my experience more and more over time, and if any of the points mentioned above really tickle your fancy, consider this a recommendation from me. Have a good one!

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

An intense narrative RPG with Lovecraftian horror themes. Taking on a role of a private investigator Charles Reed, we arrive in Oakmont, a city consumed by flood and unusual visions, in order to find the source of our own strange visions that have been getting more nightmarish with time. The city is unlike anything normal. Huge monoliths have appeared from the ground in some places and strange beastly creatures of otherworldly origin roam the dark corners of the city. Some of the streets are completely flooded and can only be traversed by boats. And it is always rainy and miserable.
The game takes on an open world approach. The city is pretty huge, consisting of several districts, and over time we get to explore all of them when doing our quests. The main plot revolves around figuring out the source of the madness and visions, but the game is not limited to that, and there are many sidequests that we can find during our time in Oakmont.
The game's world has been well-thought out and is very believable to the 1920s time, like alternate history with paranormal horror. Sure, we can't actually interact with most things in the city and can't speak to most NPCs, but this is no GTA and the point is not in picking fights with random citizens or to have car chases with cops, so if this is what you're expecting, you won't find it here. If you take the time to do sidequests and read the documents that you find in locations that you visit, then there's a lot of interesting lore that has been developed. But even if you don't, the well-crafted aspects of world-building are still obvious, such as the politics taking place as a handful of powerful families, religious cults and other influential figures try to have things their way, and of course getting deep into helping doctors and scientists research the monstrous creatures and finding out their peculiar origin. Most sidequests are fun, and even those that seem like fetch quests, often have some interesting and unexpected events happening. The main story is also for the most part well-written.
The gameplay is varied. As we are a PI, most of our quests involve us investigating mysteries, so when getting clues, we need to explore the places of interest, look for parts of the environment that can be interacted with, and at times do our own research in a library or among police records or other archives by using keywords given to us. At some locations we also need to figure out the sequence of events and in what order they came, letting us be a detective with a sort of supernatural talent of deduction.
On many occasions, the places we visit are dangerous and combat is inevitable. Majority of the time we face monstrous creatures of a handful of different types, but at times there are human enemies too. As we make progress in the plot, we get more and more weapons, so at first when we only have handguns, we can only take on the weaker monsters, but then later we get shotguns, SMGs, and grenades, and can take on even the bigger baddies single-handedly. Now combat may feel a tad clunky at times as our character can't really dodge or defend himself in any way other than shooting his guns or hitting enemies melee-style, so try and not get surrounded in a tiny room. Also with enemies not always flinching from our shots, it may not be clear if we hit them or not.
The supplies for crafting ammo and healing items are somewhat scarce, so we do need to make them count. Although once you get used to effectively managing your stuff and always being on a lookout for item stashes, then you'll find that you don't run out of stuff anymore. Many of the places where we can find crafting items have those items replenish when we leave and come back to this place later, so they're not gone for good after the first time. You might want to keep in mind a house or two on the map to which you can return regularly to restock on supplies when necessary.
Generally I've enjoyed the gameplay, but I do have a couple of points worth criticising. Firstly, the city feels a bit too big in terms of size and requires a lot of walking. We do unlock fast travel points as we explore it, and they greatly help to reduce walking time between locations when doing quests. But I feel there could've been some more fast-travel points around the city so to reduce mindless walking even more. And the second thing I disliked were the diving sections, when we're deep underwater in a diving suit. Controlling a character underwater is way too clunky and we just slowly walk from point A to point B while occasionally avoiding enemies and hot springs that hurt us. I found those sections to be boring and unneeded. The game could've removed those bits altogether and have us automatically at the next locations and it wouldn't have suffered in any way. The only positive thing is that these diving sections aren't too numerous and usually end pretty quickly.
Presentation is great. Visuals are moody and atmospheric, perfect for the story and genre the game is going for. Music is low-key and usually stays in the background. Voice acting is pretty high quality. UI, menus and interacting with environment is all easy and intuitive (although would've been nice to have more than 3 save slots in a playthrough).
Really enjoyed my time playing through The Sinking City. I'd say it's even better than the Sherlock Holmes games that these developers have made. Frogwares are talented at this genre of narrative games and I'll be trying out more of their work no doubt.