The Sinking City Remastered

in library

3.8/5

( 76 Reviews )

3.8

76 Reviews

English & 15 more

Posted on: March 1, 2024

Purgatoriant

Verified owner

Games: 363 Reviews: 12

Good stuff*

A chill-paced and immersive 1920s lovecraftian detective story experience that manages to capture the feeling of everything going shite just before the looming end. Sounds good? Nice! However, did you notice the asterisk on the title? We'll get to that next... *however... here's three points good to know before getting at it: 1. Deluxe edition, DLC, and repetitiveness - 'Merciful Madness' and 'Worshippers of the Necronomicon' contain playable content of somewhat uneven quality. There is some good stuff within these two DLCs, however, if you happen to be completionist type of a player, these might also very well commit to the game starting to feel a bit repetitive before you're done with it. The three other DLCs are at best utterly and completely shrug worthy or may even make the gameplay experience actively worse. 2. The Detective in 1920s bit of the experience - It is kind of neat and immersive how you'll be doing some manual piecing together, figuring out, sourcing information from archives, making your own notes on the ingame map, and such and such. But manual does mean manual, so be prepared to think for a bit, run around a lot, and read at least an old-school printed newspaper's worth of text. 3. Beelining through the game is the way to go - The skill tree is boring. Getting overpowered happens a bit too easily and being a god-like figure armed to the teeth kind of screws with the theme of the game. And the optional side quests contain maddening amounts of fetch quest, which snappily make it glaringly obvious that there's no elder goddamn value in scouring through the same recycled building asset for the nth time fetching some unusable thing with no value of anykind. So remember this: minimum amount of XP necessary to progress, and if you need more, avoid the side-quests with lots of icons straight from the get go, as they are a telltale sign of crummy fetch quests. TL;DR: If you skipped here immediately, The Sinking City really ain't the game for you.

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Posted on: March 10, 2024

GamerZyeaH94

Games: 281 Reviews: 16

Great, but terrible at the same time

I haven't been so conflicted about a game in a long time. There were moments where I would give it 4,5, or even 5 stars, and yet there were moments where I would go for 1 or 2. So to get to the point... PROs: + Interesting, branching story that I was genuinely invested in + Interesting characters with their own motives + Great voice acting + Amazing atmosphere especially during the nights with fog everywhere + Interesting sidequests, where even the "fetch-quest" ones do have some tidbits of worldbuilding in them + Great, tense music that adds to the averall atmosphere + Finding clues and putting them together in each case is very satisfying! + Great UI that's satysfying to use CONs: - The open world city is meaningless, there's almost nothing to do in it, except traversing it - Moving around the city is tedious, until you unlock most of the fast travel points - Infected zones are pointless and serve more as an obstacle than a looting place - Combat system is kinda boring. It's just sor of... there. It works, but you'll be fighting the same kinds of monsters everywhere over and over again. - The grind for resources (to craft ammo and some other things) is tedious. When you find yourself in a situation without ammo, it's a long process to try to find crafting materials without fighting monsters everywhere and wasting ammo again - The skill system is kinda pointless a few percent bonus there, a few more percent bonus elsewhere... Summary: Even with it's flaws, I found myself constantly returning to this game and having a great time. If there was a more fleshed out open world and better combat system It would be a very solid 4/5. But like this I cannot give it more than 3/5 stars.

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Posted on: February 17, 2024

scorkery

Verified owner

Games: 158 Reviews: 7

Mediocre but worth a playthrough

This is a cool idea that unfortunately could have been better executed. Combat is awkward, as others have also complained. Ammo is scarce and there is no way to replenish health besides hunting around for first aid kits. Adventure players who don't like combat will be frustrated by the endless monster fights. However, people who play a lot of action games will likely also complain that the fights are monotonous and not challenging enough. Worst of both worlds. This game also suffers from very lazy asset overuse. There are only like five basic floorplans that are used for all interior areas, including major locations, containing the same props. Exploring the same building over and over, with only minor variations in the placement of broken furniture and rotting octopus carcasses, gets old fast. Considering that gameplay is mostly running around the city exploring, this is a huge minus. Ditto for characters: every NPC and side character is built from the same basic set of like five face and hairstyle options, and after awhile they all blend together. As others have noted, there is also some banal social commentary that was needlessly shoehorned into the story. The Innsmouthers, which Lovecraft fans will recognize as the sinister hybrid sea creatures from The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in this game are depicted as a downtrodden race of fish-faced people, who are just unfortunate victims of social prejudice. Like many games of its sort, this game allows players to make choices throughout the story: save this character, let that character die, etc. However, whenever the subject of the Innsmouthers comes up, there are no options other than to sanctimoniously defend them. The game allows plenty of other morally dubious choices, such as murdering an old lady or poisoning the town's food supply, but I guess being racist against make-believe fish people is where Frogwares draws the line. However, in spite of all this, the game is decent and worth at least a full playthrough.

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Posted on: September 16, 2024

deadlydeaththor

Verified owner

Games: 143 Reviews: 7

A love letter to Lovecraft

This is the type of game where if you like atmosphere and immersion, you'll likely love this game. If you like collecting things, you'll like it even more. It's the type of game where you can tell they put a lot of time and effort into the world-building aspect of the game. Some of the mechanics, notably combat, are a little janky, though. Most combat is avoidable. That said, combat and navigation throughout the gameworld is, notaby, harder than what it needs to be - this is by design. The weapons aren't hard to aim, but ammo is sparse and the pistols aren't a gamechanger anyway. If you're not careful, it's easy to run a magazine dry and be overwhelmed - but, again, this is by design. Similarly, although you have a map and a compass to navigate the world, there is no minimap for convenience, and you have to place your own map markers - expect a lot "screen swapping" as you navigate through the city, and if you're a person who has issues navigating by map, you'll find yourself frustrated. Again, this is by design. (You're a 1920s detective!) Fast travel is also limited. A lot of the quests/missions are navigating to an area, exploring it to find clues/information points. They mix up progression with the Mental Palace to piece clues together into different "thought strings" and you also have an alternative vision that can help you see paranormal things. It's neat. I just passed 8 hours and I've done a handful of investigations. I like the look and feel of the game, and the gameplay dynamics they tried to implement. It's rough around the edges, but it's still serviceable.

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Posted on: May 13, 2025

ZestyOfXeniphers

Verified owner

Games: 144 Reviews: 71

Great game !

Thank you for the free remaster. I love this game and played it 3 times. Everything about it, the story, the characters, the graphics, the length (it is huge) ....... One of the best games of its kind out there.

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