It captures the tone, feel and even some of the more complicated undertones of Lovecraft's work pretty well, introducing a main mystery that remains engaging until its multiple (completely doomed and depressing) endings.
Unfortunately, the way you go about solving cases never changes: talk to someone, click on some evidence, maybe jerkily fight a monster or two, then fast travel to a specific public building to solve a simple association puzzle, fast travel again to repeat the cycle.
It gets repetitive almost instantly, and the bland, copy-pasted open world and throwaway leveling and crafting systems give it a by the numbers feel that suck all the tension out of it. A shame, but it's a formula that could be improved and iterated upon.
(Whelp, they announced a sequel)
Unfortunately, the way you go about solving cases never changes: talk to someone, click on some evidence, maybe jerkily fight a monster or two, then fast travel to a specific public building to solve a simple association puzzle, fast travel again to repeat the cycle.
It gets repetitive almost instantly, and the bland, copy-pasted open world and throwaway leveling and crafting systems give it a by the numbers feel that suck all the tension out of it. A shame, but it's a formula that could be improved and iterated upon.
(Whelp, they announced a sequel)
The game had a lot of cool ideas and so much potential, but the constant glitches really hindered the experience for me. Big disappointment.
When I saw the announcement that a sequel is coming, I thought it was finally time to give this one a try – and, of course, by “give this one a try” I mean “fully finish it including the DLCs, too”. Yeah, I’m a completionist, I can’t help it…
Well, first of all, the atmosphere is crazy good, it’s spot on from beginning till end. The city, the characters, the monsters, even the weather and the little critters crawling everywhere – they’re all just oozing atmosphere. I wouldn’t call the game scary, but it’s definitely horror, make no mistake, it just doesn’t rely on cheap jumpscares and stuff like that. Instead, we get a detective thriller in a flooded, half-ruined city, with creepy visions, and the constant feeling of unease and dread hanging over you wherever you go. The story that connects all these things is quite good, too, in my opinion, especially if you like Lovecraftian themes, such as cosmic horror and the insignificance of humankind.
It's a real pity that the gameplay itself gets really monotonous after a while, at least it did for me. I liked the detective parts, like interrogating suspects, collecting clues, the retrocognition scenes, and the fact that most cases can have different outcomes depending on your choices. Unfortunately, most of the side quests are quite boring, just your average fetch quests, and going back and forth in a city with hardly any fast travel points in it is not much fun after several hours, believe me. And the battles… If you ask me, those are just simply terrible, you should try and avoid them as much as you can. You take lots of damage from most monsters, healing takes a lot of time, and the protagonist constantly keeps losing his sanity making things even more confusing… Meh, in my opinion, this should have been simply a more linear mystery adventure game instead of an open-world action-adventure.
Unfortunately, there are also some bugs, glitches and graphics issues, like stutters, and, for some reason, they decided to remove the option to save manually in the PS5 version (I’m not sure about other platforms, but I know you can save manually in the PC version). Strange. Anyway, as long as you focus only on the main quest, and you like atmospheric horrors, you might want to keep this one on your radar.
Well, first of all, the atmosphere is crazy good, it’s spot on from beginning till end. The city, the characters, the monsters, even the weather and the little critters crawling everywhere – they’re all just oozing atmosphere. I wouldn’t call the game scary, but it’s definitely horror, make no mistake, it just doesn’t rely on cheap jumpscares and stuff like that. Instead, we get a detective thriller in a flooded, half-ruined city, with creepy visions, and the constant feeling of unease and dread hanging over you wherever you go. The story that connects all these things is quite good, too, in my opinion, especially if you like Lovecraftian themes, such as cosmic horror and the insignificance of humankind.
It's a real pity that the gameplay itself gets really monotonous after a while, at least it did for me. I liked the detective parts, like interrogating suspects, collecting clues, the retrocognition scenes, and the fact that most cases can have different outcomes depending on your choices. Unfortunately, most of the side quests are quite boring, just your average fetch quests, and going back and forth in a city with hardly any fast travel points in it is not much fun after several hours, believe me. And the battles… If you ask me, those are just simply terrible, you should try and avoid them as much as you can. You take lots of damage from most monsters, healing takes a lot of time, and the protagonist constantly keeps losing his sanity making things even more confusing… Meh, in my opinion, this should have been simply a more linear mystery adventure game instead of an open-world action-adventure.
Unfortunately, there are also some bugs, glitches and graphics issues, like stutters, and, for some reason, they decided to remove the option to save manually in the PS5 version (I’m not sure about other platforms, but I know you can save manually in the PC version). Strange. Anyway, as long as you focus only on the main quest, and you like atmospheric horrors, you might want to keep this one on your radar.
While the atmosphere was good, and the investigation was alright - it felt so easy to miss some clues that seemed to break the encounter. I was captivated by the story but felt as if the archives could have been better used for sure.
I felt the underwater sections could have benefitted by more diverse enemies and such. The climbing in those sections was a ballache.
The ending felt so completely flat and left me with 'that's it?'
I felt the underwater sections could have benefitted by more diverse enemies and such. The climbing in those sections was a ballache.
The ending felt so completely flat and left me with 'that's it?'