The Sinking City

The Sinking City is a 2019 horror adventure game where you play as Charles Reed, a private investigator, who travels to the city of Oakmont in search of answers about the strange visions he's been having. Upon his arrival, he gets tangled up in the city's various messes, including a feud between Robert Throgmorton and the Innsmouthers. Oh, and there's that little matter of the EOD, newly rebranded as "Everyone's Obvious Duty," and the fact that it seems like something is about to rise from the sea. No big deal.

The Sinking City is heavily influenced by Lovecraft's racism. And Trump's, actually (you'll find two memos in the game that reference his two favorite catchphrases). I really appreciate the fact that the developers give you an opportunity to confront a specific character about their bigotry. It made me rethink the way I viewed the Innsmouthers, too. If you've read The Shadow Over Innsmouth, your feelings were probably the same as mine. Innsmouthers are hostile and can't be trusted. You remember what happened at the Gilman House, right? But the Innsmouth folk actually don't seem that bad in The Sinking City. In fact, I found myself protecting them throughout the game, even when it was against my better judgment sometimes. You'll have to make a lot of tough decisions while playing The Sinking City, you'll always question whether you're doing the right thing because no one is 100% innocent and sometimes by trying to do the right thing, you'll have to make some really bad choices.

The game has a lot of similar elements to the Call of Cthulhu game that was released not too long ago, but The Sinking City was definitely more enjoyable to play. I mean, I actually finished this game. There are a series of main quests that send you around the city, where you're usually expected to talk to various people, go through the archives (at the police station, university, etc.) and put clues together so you can further your investigation, examine a crime scene and collect evidence so you can begin retrocognition and piece together the events that happened there...And that's basically it. You do fight some monsters along the way, but combat itself isn't that interesting and neither is the variety of monsters you deal with (although I will say I stopped doing side quests early on, until I received a shotgun, because I saw one of the monsters and ran away).

While completing your main quests and side quests, you'll earn XP so you can upgrade Charles' mind, vigor and combat proficiency. I actually maxed out mind and vigor first, as the rewards for those two branches were more helpful. I recommend starting with "smart packing." I really don't know how much the extra XP skills help, but I would acquire those next, then alternate between higher health and sanity, followed by upgrades for the shotgun and then the skills that give you a chance to save crafting materials. After that, it's just whatever you think is the least useless.

Completing side quests will help you max out your skills, but as I mentioned before, the problem I found was that in the beginning of the game, many of the available side quests had monsters that were too difficult for me to fight at that point, so I had to come back to them later on. Around chapter 8, when I decided to do all the side quests at once, I started to reach the point I always reach when I play any game. I just wanted it to be over. I enjoyed The Sinking City, but now I wanted to move on. And I 100% blame it on the fact that I tried to rush through the side quests and some of them were not enjoyable for me, so it felt like I was forcing myself to play. (I suggest completing them as you pick them up, if you're able to.) Some of the side quests, like All That Glitters, require you to enter infested zones. I almost gave up in the middle of that one because entering those areas stressed me out. I completed every sidequest except Functional Brain Cylinders and the Worshippers of the Necronomicon DLC (which is supposed to be very good) because I was not about to go through the infested zones again.

I have a list of pros and cons about things I have not already discussed...It's interesting, the list of cons is pretty long, but I genuinely enjoyed this game and would recommend playing it. Don't let these lists fool you.

Let's start with the pros:

1. I feel like the game is fair. Yes, you have limited supplies, but crafting items respawn, so you can always scavenge for more if you're low on items. (There's an exploit you can use if you want to gather items faster, which I'll mention later on in this post.)
2. Infested areas are clearly marked, so if you're like me and you want no part of them, you won't have to worry about accidentally wandering into one.
3. If you're low on first aid kits and antipsychotics, you can always go back to your hotel room and get more.

And my extremely long list of cons, that by no means took away from my enjoyment of the game (slight spoilers here):

1. I would have preferred an actual mini map instead of the weird bar-map going across the top of the screen.
2. There was a glitch in the hospital where most people were floating in the air (see above picture).
3. This one is personal, but I couldn't handle the underwater segments. That goes for any game that forces you into the ocean.
4. There was a glitch where I tried to get out of the boat at the dock, went flying into the air and immediately died upon landing.
5. There was a glitch where someone was fishing and as I approached them, they flew off and disappeared.
6. Travel can be tedious, between running through the city or traveling by boat, until fast travel points are unlocked.
7. Enemies respawn, which kind of sucks if you think you've cleared an area, leave and then check the map only to find out there are still clues there. (I made that mistake once. Never again.)
8. Extremely long load screens.
9. Retrocognition was difficult sometimes because everything is some shade of blue, which made it hard to find my way around.
10. There was a glitch where, upon loading, I clipped through the ground and had to reload the game.
11. The decisions you make throughout the game have no real consequences and only slightly affect the final chapter of the game. They don't affect the endings at all.
12. When there's a sanity meter in a game, I'll always compare it to Eternal Darkness and The Sinking City's sanity effects couldn't live up to everything Eternal Darkness throws at you. This was one area of the game that really did disappoint me.
13. The game does not warn you when the point of no return is, which means it's possible that you won't be able to complete your side quests. SPOILER: The point of no return is during Into the Depths, when you've completed the seal and return to St. Michael's Church.
14. No NG+.
15. There's only one "real" mandatory "boss" battle and SPOILER you never fight the Old Ones. Not that you really could, anyway. 
16. You're able to choose one of three endings, but they're all extremely short and I felt a bit disappointed that after all I'd been through in the game, that was all I got for it.
17. There's no chapter select upon completion, which means that if you want to go back and see what happens if you make different choices, you have to play through the entire game again.

I was so surprised to see this poster of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I actually have this poster hanging in my bedroom, but the image is flipped.

Before I end this post, I want to discuss a few things, all relating to an item exploit posted to reddit that will allow you to quickly stock up on crafting materials, including rags, metal scraps and cordite (which can be hard to come by). This was incredibly helpful and it made the game so much easier for me once I realized the trunk in that house gives you a ton of crafting items, and you can just walk in and out immediately, over and over.

Unfortunately, when I was farming items there once, this happened. (I did figure out what that symbol means. The building has loaded. I'm an idiot.) If you want to avoid monsters and townspeople unleashing monsters onto the city of Oakmont (and you don't mind traveling a bit further), you can go to the house where Call of the Ocean is located. The chest right up the stairs seems to give you an infinite amount of crafting materials if you enter and exit, without having to worry about enemies. It actually seems like most Letters to Oakmont locations have chests you can exploit. Just be cautious when entering the buildings because for some (Disgusting Exaltation), monster spawns are random. 

So, final verdict on The Sinking City? It's littered with glitches, but it's a genuinely enjoyable experience. It can be a bit slow and there's not much payoff at the end, but I like that it was sort of Hammett meets Lovecraft and I thought it was interesting to see a new side to the Innsmouthers. I didn't find the game scary when I first started playing it, but the longer it went on, the more it got under my skin. If you like horror games and you don't mind a bit of a slow burn, give it a chance when it goes on sale.