The Sinking City is a good Lovecraft adaptation caught in a mediocre game.
The open world seems insanely detailed and intricate at first glance, but unfortunately there isn't as much hidden behind it as hoped. On the one hand, some side quests are interesting. They offer quite a bit of variety in terms of content and expand the lore. On the other hand, the game hardly rewards you for exploring. Apart from crates, there is hardly anything to discover off the quest paths.
The big problem with the quests is that they almost always follow a very similar pattern. You enter a place, shoot a few monsters, examine all the clues and reconstruct the events. With the clues gained, you then move on to the next station at the other end of the map. In between, you look at loading screens and popping textures very often. Not particularly challenging and or fun.
The combat and really all the other mechanics seem screwed on and don't quite fit. I was grateful for the variety, but the implementation lacks skill and budget.
Focus would have done the developers good in general, because many elements are also really great. The character design, though clunky, is something else and shows a lot of innovation. Apart from ape-ish looking patriarchs and fishy looking dudes, even the protagonist looks a like guy who has lived through and seen some effed up stuff. The same goes for the environments. The city really feels like it could exist exactly like this in a tale by Lovecraft. I also liked how grey most of the important "choices" felt. No obvious good or bad ones.
Certainly the better game compared to Call of Cthulhu (2018) but had much more potential.
The open world seems insanely detailed and intricate at first glance, but unfortunately there isn't as much hidden behind it as hoped. On the one hand, some side quests are interesting. They offer quite a bit of variety in terms of content and expand the lore. On the other hand, the game hardly rewards you for exploring. Apart from crates, there is hardly anything to discover off the quest paths.
The big problem with the quests is that they almost always follow a very similar pattern. You enter a place, shoot a few monsters, examine all the clues and reconstruct the events. With the clues gained, you then move on to the next station at the other end of the map. In between, you look at loading screens and popping textures very often. Not particularly challenging and or fun.
The combat and really all the other mechanics seem screwed on and don't quite fit. I was grateful for the variety, but the implementation lacks skill and budget.
Focus would have done the developers good in general, because many elements are also really great. The character design, though clunky, is something else and shows a lot of innovation. Apart from ape-ish looking patriarchs and fishy looking dudes, even the protagonist looks a like guy who has lived through and seen some effed up stuff. The same goes for the environments. The city really feels like it could exist exactly like this in a tale by Lovecraft. I also liked how grey most of the important "choices" felt. No obvious good or bad ones.
Certainly the better game compared to Call of Cthulhu (2018) but had much more potential.