The Sinking City

A little unpolished, particularly the open world NPCs, but a compelling story.

Great storytelling. and pacing. some of the clues were hard to find cause you just don't think about looking there so you spend like 20 minutes looking all over the house till you notice one of the clues is framed on the wall. also kinda odd how less than 10% of players chose to trust the next "Seed" in the cycle to keep it going. and just went "Restarting the Cycle is pointless" but maybe I'm just biased and want Humanity to keep going

I really enjoyed the game from start to finish. It was easy to get immersed in the atmosphere and the role of a detective to the point I didn't want to stop playing.
Story was good, combat was good, ammo was not as scarce game leads you to believe.
Also I loved the fact that I was able to develop the character entirely before the game ended.

That being said, I do have two complaints:
1. for a detective, picking a fight via dialog while being surrounded by several opponents wielding a shotgun... a detective... highly intelligent move
2. sidequests could have been more easy to pick up instead of relying just on pure luck or Google, but that's just me. I just don't like the feeling of missing out and I dont want to break out of immersion of being a detective, by going out of the game and looking for clues on the internet.

Pros
1- developers care about lovecraft lore
2-atmosphere is fine in most cases
3- voice acting


Cons/Opportunities for improvement
1- less clunky combat
2- tighter story (this one felt a bit tedious)
3- less repetitive gameplay/investigations (more puzzles)
4- More grand and rewarding ending/s

Grab for $15 or less if you’re a lovecraft or frogwares fan.

Hopefully frogwares is aware of the opportunities for improvement present in this first game and really raise the bar for The Sinking City 2. Given the new change and direction they have mentioned for 2, it sounds like they are on the right track. Let’s hope they don't find themselves under water.

I only recommend this if you're willing to ignore the major problems the game has to experience its story.

Some things that stuck out to me:

The Sinking City The Fetchquest City

Regular frame stutters as is typical of poorly optimized Unreal Engine games.

Major graphical bugs on occasion.

NPCs have weird/random routing, get stuck in the floor and often abruptly snap to face a different direction.

Cops will shoot you if you're shooting monsters. Lol

Building layouts and signs around the city are extremely repetitive.

Collision-mapping in some areas is downright atrocious. It's a mix of not being able to walk up one step, getting stuck on terrain or in-between objects.

Climbing mechanic could use a lot of work.

Charles doesn't know how to jump, so you can't jump across a 3 foot gap.

Your sanity meter will go down if you're looking in the general direction of a monster, even if you can't see it because it's behind a wall.

When you die, you almost always respawn at a fast-travel box with the same ammunition you had when you died, but all the monsters you killed will respawn.

Every ending for the game is extremely underwhelming.

I liked this game, up until you get to the mind palace, and have to manually piece together clues. You are a private detective, and gather clues. These clues are stored in the mind palace. From there you have to piece them together.

It is hit and miss as to how this works. Developers get these crazy ideas about features in a game, and wonder why sales drop. Look at Starfield.

If the mind palace did not exist, or was done better, or simplified, I would have continued playing the game. The game tells you when to go into the mind palace, and when I do, I am unable to piece the clues together. To get the clues to work together, you click on one, then another and hit a key on your keyboard. If you have 15 clues, it is hit or miss if you can get this to work. Terrible feature.

ᓚᘏᗢ By Kay, this cat loves this game, even with its side-quests which are mostly go-fetch/bring-back (only dogs enjoy this kind of task, pfff). The main adventure, on the contrary, is full of surprises and originality, while remaining faithful to the Lovecraft source. But I hate this game for its combat phases. Now, don't misunderstand this cat, I don't mind a good fight, I enjoy it even, but here it's like being sent against a pack of rats with your paws sunk into wet socks. Un-blinking-fun!
Good news, though: some guy came up with a MOD, very easy to apply, to eliminate all the combat awkwardness which ruins the game: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2613390670 Thanks to that, you can enjoy The Sinking City as the marvellous and mesmerizing nightmare it's supposed to be.

Quite good, but outdated graphics.

Weak shooting but great lovecraftian atmosphere and detective work. Worth a buy during sale, especially if the pack includes all DLC.

This game is very much like reading Lovecraftian fiction.
Dense, obtuse, hard to get into. The King In Yellow is there.

But despite all that it's also fascinating, engaging, and incredibly genuine, altho in the case of mister Lovecraft that's not always a good thing, that's not the case with this game however. Just like the fiction it has many issues, but if you can sit down and engage with it for just a moment you'll find a lot to really enjoy.

My first Frogwares game, but certainly not my last! Probably not worth the full price, but on sale it's absolutely worth it.

The game is awesome and immersive; they capture the feel of H.P. Lovecraft's books. The game mechanics are good and easy to use. I recommend this to whoever likes H.P. Lovecraft's stories and/or RPG/detective games.

awesome game. took me a couple times to get into it and figure out the dynamics, but is a fairly fun game

i enjoyed the game very much
the pace, the storyline, ending
controls are good.... only the "research" can be a little bit confusing

9/10

I very much enjoyed the environment and the characters, both were well thought out and felt real to the extent a Lovecraftian city can. Only criticisms are recycled assets and somewhat short endings, both of which I think can be ignored if you focus on the good. Without a deal/discount, I would say 6/10 if this genre is your cup of tea, and if there's a deal definitely bumps it up to at least an 8.

For everything this game does good, it does one thing wrong

It's a very grim and dark Lovecraftian setting, but with modern social norms
It's lacking in direct refunds of resources, but easily obtainable as everything respawns
Every monster is a dangerous encounter, that are plenty of in the world while requiring all your ammo to get through
Your choices matter, except they don't really
and you can kill NPCs if they're mean to you actively, but hurting a bystander will result in a hefty penalty, while also protecting important NPCs, instead of actually punishing you for acting against them
I love the whole "search your own locations" and having to make your own map markers, but travelling is tedious with nothing interesting to do and fast-travel is so scarce it becomes a chore to travel.

It's a game with the right intentions, but not the good execution. I'd say this is a solid Discount Game.

Idk why people are complaining. This game is easy unlike other puzzle games that I have played. And those who are complaining about shooting and all, there's clearly a TPS tag. And in the real world, there is no say what might happen to you even if you're a detective. You might die or you might kill someone innocent. At least you can load your progress in the game. I only died twice in this game due to my mistake. The monsters might be hard at the beginning but it gets easy later. Finally, for the achievements, check the guides here or on the web.

A really good mystery thriller and detective game. Somewhat similar to Sherlock Holmes or Vampyr. Explore a huge map, dank and decaying city streets filled with all sorts of riffraff. The main story is thought provoking and intriguing. The main character is a witty and admirable figure that is faced with many moral decisions. I had the misfortune of having some technical difficulties. Sound and visual glitches but not enough for me to give up. It's a good game that I enjoyed but feel like it could use a bit more polish. I also think it drags on a bit much but a shorter game would just be my preference. Being a native of Massachusetts my whole life, it is always fun to play something based on the area. Although the city itself is fictional as far as I know.

This game is so bad. It feels like it was made by interns learning Unreal Engine on the job, who have also never made a game in any other engine. And this is, like, the...15th game of this studio? Do they think this quality is acceptable or do they just not care? I guess I'm part of the problem, because I keep buying their games, as they do fill a niche, but that's no excuse to ship something so terribly amateurish, broken and unfinished.
If you like detective/mystery games with interesting stories, get it in a deep deep discount.

Charles Reed, a former Navy diver turned private investigator with unexplained visions, is not alone in his strange visions and doubts about reality. The citizens of the isolated town of Oakmont suffer from similar delusions, which is an opportunity for the private eye to find the source of his insane illness.

But once he lands on the shores of a half-flooded city, where misery and ruin are the new norm, all sorts of events will seemingly distance him from his goal. And here comes the reason why you should play The Sinking City. A great detective work from Frogwares, which makes the Sherlock Holmes series a worthy game adaptation of the original.

The creators also use a mind palace in their latest game, where your findings from interviews with witnesses and suspects and from examining the crime scene are collected. Yes, you will pick up many objects, turn them and look for interesting things on them. You will read many, many letters, notes, diaries, newspaper articles, threatening messages, but also completely unrelated excerpts that add atmosphere to the game.

The detective has been given supernatural abilities related to his hallucinations. Thanks to them, he can reveal hidden objects to an ordinary citizen, as well as entire rooms. He can also replay the events preceding the crime, and it is up to you to determine their correct order. And to make matters worse, strange silhouettes from another world can navigate him to the escaped criminal, similar to the hitchhiking in the third Witcher.

Where (fish)people and evidence are of no help, one of the archives will come in handy. At the police station, you can find out the identity of the perpetrator based on the crime, in the newspaper you can find a cannery through an ad, and in the library you can find additional information about one of the many religions.

It is in these cases that The Sinking City excels, because it requires you to engage your brain. Archives are an exact science, so if you enter any of the required information incorrectly, you will not get the result. For example, if you are looking for a patient with a gunshot wound to the shoulder in a hospital, you will not enter the string Personnel-Therapeutic Department-19th century (the game takes place after World War I).

The Sinking City is a good detective game. Unfortunately, the term detective is accompanied by the words RPG and action, which simply have no place here. Not in this form. As a whole, it simply does not work as expected and you will have to make a lot of concessions to enjoy wandering around the flooded city. If you can pull it off, you will get a decent game in an attractive environment. 30%

Such an amazing game for all the Lovecraft lovers. It was pretty good if you like mysteries, but gets kind of repetitive at the end. Despite of this, a solid game

Intriguing and enjoyable story. Gameplay is ok.

It's a nice game, not amazing but it has some good ideas and quests. The gameplay becomes a bit repetitive at times and the characters aren't the most complex, although the branching story is interesting enough to keep you engaged.

Not great, not terrible, but I had fun

Its entertaining, slightly difficult due to the limited resources, but easy enough to where you can still focus on the story.

The Sinking City is the only functional game I gave up on without completing in 2024. The game is somewhat lengthy and it rarely felt like I was making progress even when completing story missions. The 3rd person combat is very bad and over the course of the game I found it easier in most situations to just run away. When it comes to detective work, The Sinking City doesn’t completely hold your hand. However, it does frequently make do busy work like going to the library often to research’s information you found at a location. At the end of day, The Sinking City doesn’t really give enough entertainment back to be worth the 20ish hour time investment.

The Sinking City:

Yes and I’ll play it again lol. Love the vibe of this game. The plot is good, spooky creatures, and decent combat.

Played this on Epic when it got first released. Even though it has some repetitive content from time to time, this is a pretty good adaptation of Lovecraft's work.

I found this very immersive and, until about the 16-hour mark, pretty scary too! I really enjoy Lovecraft-y things and I feel that this did a pretty decent job of bringing that feeling.

So this game, This is definitely a game. jump to the bottom of this if you want a synopsis.

Its very hard to describe sinking city because it honestly feels like a fever dream at some points and i can't for the life of me rap my head around it all. So maybe i should start with the basics and work my way through it all.

the graphics in this game aren't bad but definitely janky at certain points. I've seen alot of people say its punching above its belt line for a double AA game but to be honest its not that good considering it came out in 2019. I'm not saying they're bad but don't listen to people who try and make it a selling point.

The game play itself is nice if not a little simple. very rarely will you have any difficulty with a puzzle or a sequence. the real difficulty comes from trying to get 100% on a crime scene, which is more annoying then fun especially when your searching for something that does nothing. Though the mechanics never got tiring and i always got excited when they were used. When it came to combat and travel, ehhhhhh it can be alot better.

this game is not a horror game in the slightest, its much more of an adventure rpg where you go around solving mysteries and shooting monsters. the guns are nice and they really sound like they can pack a punch which is always fun. I never ran out of ammo at any point in this game so you'll always be using them. The upgrades leave alot to be desired but your melee is a mighty shovel and thats hard to pass up. as for the enemies, they leave a bit to be desired. there are 4 main enemy types and each has 3 different variations. so you're going to be fighting alot of the same thing over and over and over and over again. they aren't very challenging either some just take a few bullets more than the rest, which is fine because you will never run out of ammo.

Travel begins really slow, especially when you have to navigate the flooded districts in the beginning of the game. but the more you explore the more you fast travel from place to place which really speeds the game up. then it kind of suffers from its fast travel, objectives are usually right next to the way points so you can really zip around and miss the things in the city. its also really disoreintating sometimes. but overall i give it a pass. though im still annoyed there is an entire section of the city you just can't access, it looks like it was meant to be a region but they lost the time to do it.

so mechanically its servicible, its nothing i would rant and rave about but it works well enough that you can push through it without alot of resistance.

Now the story.

I won't spoil it but lets just say its a little difficult to understand whats actually happening. If you are someone who plays RPG games and you get upset when the game makes a really dumb situation for the sake of adding more drama to plot so it feels heightened, you are not going to like some of this story. there were a number of times the game forces you to choose between two options that are both just terrible. in fact you wish someone there had a brain cell to realise how bad the decisions are. but it doesn't matter too much because your choices do not affect the world around you. which is another major downside.

though to its credit as weird and as wacky as it is, the story is a perfect representation of lovecraft's works. just remember though lovecraft's work isn't actually very good.

the story works well enough and is super interesting and engaging, to the point where i will even say if you don't know much about the Cthulu mythos or lovecraft's work i still recommend it. its interesting and engaging and you always want to see where it leads. fair warning though it leads down a rather disappointing road.

so final thoughts. do i recommend this game? yeah, i'd say so but only when it was on sale, it is not worth the full price. it took me about 30 hours to complete including all the side quests. the story is pretty good and the game play doesn't hinder it too much to make it a hassle to complete. I bought it for like 11 bucks and it constantly goes on sale, so its well worth it in my opinion. overall 6.5/10 great if you're bored looking for something different to play

Wonderful Lovecraftian romp, thoroughly enjoyed both gameplay and aesthetics. the artbook expanded on the environment.

A very surprising game. Great story and characters. You can almost smell the city through the visuals. Thumbs up.

Before I played this game I had no boobs and a flat butt. Now I've got a fat pair of cheeks and big ol' double D's. Thanks, Frogwares! Also, the game was fun.

You can really feel the stench of rotting fish and the cold and wet of the atmosphere. This game captures the Lovecraft feel!

I liked like it a lot more than I expected. Unique interesting story line. Good dynamics play.

The game is awesome and emersive; they capture the feel of H.P. Lovecraft's books. The game mechanics are good and easy to use. I recommend this to whoever likes H.P. Lovecraft's books.

One of the best Mystery games i played since Call of Cthulhu.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere of it, and the music is peaceful yet terrifying.
10/10 I definitely recommend this game to all Mystery Lovers!

First of all, I mostly enjoyed my time with this game. It's a very fun setting to explore and the writing and voice acting is quite good for the most part. There's also very few bugs, and any glitches are pretty minimal which is rare for an openworld game.
The detective investigation mechanics took a bit getting used to, especially the one where you go to different archives to look up people, locations etc based on keywords in documents you find which at least on medium difficulty aren't highlighted in any way making you have to actually use your brain, but once it clicked I really liked them.

But let's complain a bit.

The first thing to know when buying this is that you do not want the DLC, some of them are basically just pay to win stuff for a singleplayer game, so you're basically paying for cheat codes.
The two that adds in more quests are just kind of lazy with several of the new side-quests just being long fetch-quests. Yes, the writing is good as always, but the time you spend fetching all that stuff for the little extra fleshing out of the lore really isn't worth it.

Like I said, the world is great... in a depressing post-apocalyptic kind of way. Makes you just want to run around and explore... DON'T! This is not a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game, you wont find any exciting stuff while randomly going around. Quests can not be started out of order etc.
Most houses will just be empty and not populated by anything lore/story related until you not only have the right quest going, but have the correct clues for your character to want to go to that location.

So you should pretty much play the game as a linear questing game, not as a sandbox, because it isn't despite its open map.

Another big complaint is the indoor settings, the outdoors are lovingly handcrafted and stuff doesn't ever really repeat. But when you go indoors, even inside key locations, it's all just cut and paste. I think there's maybe ten if not even less indoor layouts. Sure they'll be slightly redecorated from spot to spot, but it gets real samey after a while.
"Let's see what's in here, ah layout number 4, the one with a wooden boat working as a ramp between the main and upper floors."

There's also quite a few anachronisms in the writing. Like for example a person being a voice acting for movies... in 1922...

After a little bit the combat gets really easy. There's not many enemy types and even though some can kick your ass real quick if you let them, they don't really pose much of a threat if you have ammo, and while you can't carry much and have to craft it yourself, only a few hours in you realise that's not really a problem because crafting materials is plentiful and half the enemy types can easily be beaten with your shovel once you level that skill up.

Yes, it's a very negative review but I did enjoy the game, just think I'd enjoyed it even more if some tweaks had been made and I hadn't engaged in all those DLC side-quests.

It a decent enough timesink if you get it on sale. Bonus points for using visual effects nauseating enough to force me to make me take painkillers in real life to play the game.

its a love letter to anyone who loves the Lovecraft mythos. From the deep ones to the cults. Even the side missions.

An extremely fun detective game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. You'll have to use your brain a bit and look at your map and casebook a lot. The combat leaves much to be desired but it's problems only make the game creepier, much like the first Resident Evil Game.

the 7 hours I put into the game I have genuinely made very little to almost no progress and I still have little to almost no resources because all the enemies are fucking bullet sponges, it's also generally just a huge waste of time because there's not much going on in between stuff the only things you can do is either loot the same looking buildings over and over again because all the buildings practically look the same and the Interiors are practically the same on top of that you could kill everything in the area you'll be running back and suddenly there's five on you and if you don't run you're practically dead because enemies can like three shot you in this game even on normal and it's freaking wild how early on they introduce a really strong enemy that can eat two grenades two Molotov an entire clip from a basic pistol and a full clip from a magnum and it barely dies, like don't get me wrong I like the atmosphere and everything but the game is boring and a big waste of time

Would recommend this game if you are really into the Lovecraft lore. I don't know how others may have experienced it but personally this was a treat both in lore and in the puzzles of the game. The gameplay was a cherry on top. Enjoyed every minute of it as a big Lovecraftian fan!

Why did they put combat in a detective game?

People who plays detective games are looking for puzzles and murder mysteries. Combat only distract the players because they have to manage their health and ammo. Deaths will also set players back from progressing the story.

The first hour of this game, before the game introduces the combat system, is amazing. But the combat is just frustrating and unnecessary.

The Sinking City is a pretty-okay detective game, and a pretty 'meh' Lovecraft story.

It's one of those games whose big perk is being a peek into a genre that doesn't get a lot of attention otherwise; altogether, it's well made enough for what it's trying to do, but the problem is that it doesn't seem like it tries to do much at all. If you want a game that's got an LA Noire thing going on with a Lovecraft setting, go for it. If that kind of detective gameplay isn't something you're into, probably best to avoid it - and if you want to try a detective game, just play LA Noire, because this one doesn't do that type of game justice, really.

Story: Pretty straightforward Lovecraft story - madness, murder, malaise. Keeping most of this to myself because spoilers and because I didn't have much interest in finishing the game. Not a lot of connection with the characters, which makes everything and anything that happens pretty unimpactful.

Combat: Bad. Just, genuinely, pretty bad. In a game about intrigue and the horror of the unseen monsters that tear at the threads of society just beyond its fringes, this game has way too many dang 'shoot me!' monsters in it - monsters which soak up bullets, occasionally hit like a truck, but mostly have really cheeseable mechanics and tedious encounters.

Mechanics: Barebones, but serviceable. However, the game shows its hand too early and immediately dumps some spooky supernatural vision powers on you, which sort of dampens the idea that these powers are something unique or even all that interesting; like, yeah, obviously next to nobody else can do this, but you're given these powers right off the cuff and there's no time for the player to adjust to a sense of normalcy before being doused in insane, supernatural visions...that they can control at any time, and which don't seem to have any negative impact on the player character at all. Same goes for the monsters, too- there's no period of calm before you're immediately dealing with the prospect of taking out a bunch of very obviously horrible unearthly monsters.

Altogether, though- look at other reviews. Check out some gameplay videos. If the game really appeals to you, go for it- but I wouldn't.

The Sinking City is a decent adaptation of Lovecraft’s work, meshing dark themes with a variety of great investigations that culminate into tricky decisions. If the combat was less clunky and the world more polished, it would have beckoned all to its desolate shore.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3366171479

I'm on the final mission of this game after not playing for about two weeks and decided to not finish. This game has a lot of good things to offer: good atmosphere, scary monsters, and definitely has direct ties to Lovecraftian horror. My issue with this game is it's just a lot of running around and trying to find things, but if that's your thing, than this game would be for you. I also didn't love how loot was structured. It either felt like I had way to little to be able to do side missions or was given way more than I would be able to carry.

The Sinking City is the platonic ideal of a AA game: an incredibly ambitious project that punches way above its class and does so quite successfully, but that also feels limited at every turn by its technical and financial constraints, a game smack dab in between the Sherlock Holmes graphical adventures Frogwares had developed up to this point, and a third person shooter with RPG elements, whose enjoyment of will squarely depend on your capacity to keep the forest in focus instead of the janky ass trees that form it.

The game follows the path of Charles Reed, a private investigator who arrives at the city of Oakmont following strange dreams and visions that seem to drive people towards it. Over the course of this investigation, our detective will delve deep into the multiple happenings into this city, battle eldritch horrors beyond comprehension, and resist the madness emanating from its citizens. Why is everyone acting so crazy? What lurks below the city? And why the hell does this town have so many goddamn men's clothing stores?!

tSC is divided into several cases and side quests consisting of a rather straightforward loop: Find clues, find the location these clues point towards, arrive at location, put a cap on some Deep One ass, put everything together, and advance to the next case; all the while navigating the open world-ish city of Oakmont, exploring its fog-ridden streets against a rather limited selection of enemies during combat sections featuring music that is between ethereal and industrial. Yes, this is pretty much Silent Hill 2 At Home with an investigation-oriented gimmick, and trust me when I say this without an inkling of negativity.

The art style is, frankly, quite impressive. While most of it comes from the technical prowess of UE4 like lighting, physics and volumetric fog, the characters and scenery also feature really great looking assets, and this is one of those games that you will just gawk at while going through it. Boats and fish corpses litter the semi flooded streets, people wander the street muttering to themselves and acting crazy, and hey, I'd also be a little nutty if my entire town had only 4 faces to share between all its inhabitants.

Staying true to its source material, Oakmont is a seemingly organic location, but once you start paying attention, its veneer will slowly crack, showing its true, janky self. First of all, the city has not been affected by a flood, but a goddamn Kaiju attack. Cthulhu himself has risen up from the depths and dragged his scaly ballsack all across this city: it's littered by boats straight up yeeted into buildings, cars appear to have suffered horrific accidents in places where they could have never even managed to get up to speed even if they tried, and calling the state of its buildings "squalid" would be making them a kindness. It looks positively post-apocalyptic, and while it's super cool to navigate a location that gives out the feeling of dilapidated, unsettling and hostile that one imagines when reading a Lovecraft book, it's... a bit too much.

Like, at first it will feel creepy and unsettling, but quickly you will realize that no, it's just that the level designer went a little too overboard with the ambiance to the point of caricature. The bartender at the Under the Keel inn will stay there buffing the one spot in his counter, while the floor under him is chock full of seaweed. You'll see people sweeping the floor, in a rainstorm, next to a pile of rotting, half eaten fish. The people in Oakmont might be a touch off the rocker, but I'm sure they at least grasped the essentials of sanitation, or at least they'd keep enough of their sense of smell. It's these incongruous details that will keep breaking the otherwise great immersion, and you will soon be able to see the reason: tSC is a painting made with only half a palette of colors. It's a massive city created on limited assets, and as a result, you're going to see a lot of copy-and-paste design that not only looks off place, but also quite repetitive after a short time.

There's only a handful of interior location plans, shamelessly reused over, and over, and over throughout the investigations. Even major locations like the Throgmorton manor will be reused multiple times, and in most of those locations you will expect to fight the same 3-4 monsters in several waves and configurations.

Combat in tSC will start feeling clunky and dangerous, but soon you will realize you can just peace out of most combat encounters. At the start you will only have a melee attack and a pistol to your name, but as you complete investigations and level up, you will obtain new weapons and improve Charles' abilities, gradually becoming a force to be reckoned with. Fights can easily be cheesed by kiting enemies or stunlocking them, and your main hampering is the very limited ammo count per weapon; but at the same time you can just craft ammo and supplies mid fight. The combat is nothing to write home about and it's quite limited and repetitive, but it's never not satisfying to blast a bunch of Chtonians to kingdom come. Keeping an eye out for lootables is also very important to stay topped on materials, but I rarely felt like I was so short that I had to deliberately go out of my way to scavenge more.

Having said this, you might wonder what the point is in making a massive city if most of it is going to be copy-paste buildings and repetitive combat encounters, right? Credit where credit is due, the streets themselves do feel quite organic and lived-in, but most importantly, unlike games with a purely decorative open world like Cyberpunk or LA Noire, the core of the game's cases will consist on opening your map and manually locating where you must go next. I'd hesitate to call it a "minigame", but it is a little problem solving exercise that you will have to do for practically every objective, multiple times per case. Thankfully you will unlock quick travel points as you explore the city, and navigating it never felt tedious or stretched out for me. Much like the combat, both consulting the corresponding archives to figure out where to go next and actually getting there felt quite satisfying to pull out, despite how straightforward this loop is. The game also features a few gimmicks like visions where you have to put a series of embarrassingly obvious events in order, or dispelling illusory walls with your "inner eye", which are probably the more annoying and dragged out moments in the game, but overall, it wasn't too terrible.

Look, there's something that has to be appreciated about a game that knows its limits and tries to make the best of it. During my playthrough I never encountered any game breaking bugs, or collision issues, only a couple of times enemies spawned either below the floor or above the ceiling, and none of it was game breaking, or resulted in unwinnable situations. It's a game that maybe does 4-5 things, but it makes damn sure it does them well, even throwing little gimmicky flourishes like underwater sections, or letting you travel the debris-chocked flooded streets with a surprisingly solid feeling motorboat. It really feels like Frogwares only delivered the quantity they were confident to deliver with quality, which is something rare to encounter in the current gaming landscape. A bold leap from their previous work, and a landing they could hardly have stuck better, given the circumstances.

The Sinking City is a very solid game that tries to do the best with what it can, and that has the right amount of focus on the right places to deliver a mostly alright experience, As long as you are within this wavelength, that will provide 30-ish quite entertaining hours of content, and while I would not buy this game at full price, I would absolutely recommend experiencing if you can snag it at a 30-50% discount.

7/10.

It took me a few attempts to get into this game, but once I was into it I couldn't get enough of it. The atmosphere of it all, the setting, the aesthetics, everything about it, really appealed to me. It was what drew me in and got me to buy the game in the first place. The city and it's surroundings feels wrong, in the best possible way. It feels like people shouldn't be there, yet they are, and just as stuck as you are, willingly or not.

The story was decent enough to keep me engaged and had enough branches that I'd consider another play through, or two, just to experience new things. The missions and side missions are not always straight forward, but the mechanics of being a psychic detective are utilised well enough that nothing is really too difficult to figure out. Some of the side missions are pretty obscure and I wouldn't have found them without either randomly bumping into the things or looking up a guide for the game.

Combat wasn't a challenge for me. I pretty much only used melee combat and avoided guns.

Overall I'd recommend it if one enjoys eurojank of the good variety. After all, not all eurojank is created equal. I'd compare this type of eurojank to Spiders games, and boy do I ever love Spiders games.

Great game. Story and atmosphere are really well done and I enjoyed the detective work, even if it got a bit repetitive. Graphics range from serviceable to excellent. The combat is pretty basic, but does it's job. I like that most of the encounters are overwhelming to begin with and there's a sense of accomplishment once you get good enough gear to tackle the harder ones. Speaking of combat, some more enemy variety would have been nice, but maybe it's consistent with Lovecraft's writing, I don't know. My only criticism is that the open world could have been a bit more interactive. All up a fun game, especially if you're looking for something a bit weird.