I feel this is the first of many new sub-varients of "White Whale" games like... Grey Whales of games locked behind legal publisher shenanigans. Like it's more likely we'll finaly get to play them, but also like... Still a chance we won't? So it's still very exciting when a game gets freed from it's shackles like The Sinking City has.
For me it fills in a blank from another Frogwares game I played last year Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One. Which was the game they made after and everything about The Sinking City does feel like the demo track for that game. All the stuff I love is here, even if not assss good as in Sherlock, the needing to make your own waypoints, the recollections and stuff. But it also has a unique quirk which I can only describe as a Lack of commitment to it's Adventure Game identity
Cos like... It very much IS an adventure game by a dev who exclusively makes them! But there's also the second game it tries to be every now and then: RE4. And the combat is fine! The ammo conservation asepct is also fine, the idea of having to use bullets as ammo and currently is neat, tho does not gel in any meaningful way with it's Adventure Game side. It all just comes to the reminder of like... That's not what I'm here for. I'm here for an adventure game by the adventure game devs, which they absolutely did make first and formost. But there's just a RE4 stuck to it and especially considering the puzzle-esque nature of Chapter One's combat I can't help but wish it wasn't here lol
I can't help but feel like the Bullets as currency idea would've came into play more effectively if combat wasn't a real-time thing and needed to be adjusted for enemies and honest-to-god boss fights. Maybe you could expend bullets to do less puzzle-based combat things? Just feel like there's 100 more creative ways you could've done it insetad of what The Sinking City does and I hope this is the route they consider if they want to make this into their second pillar IP.
Cos I mean... they did lol feels weird to whinge about this now cos like... Clearly they know about all this games flaws, cos they are gone in the subsquensent one! And the fact that Sherlock Holmes: Awakening is done in this style of game too makes me happy we got a patented "Frogwares" format to experiment with cos it really does feel like a great accessible blueprint to making adventure games, while retaining the idiosyncrasies of their identity! I wanna play a million games like this! Make a Lupin game like this! Or Dracula! Do them all!
But I do have to be a negative nancy and end this with a bit of a warning lol cos the source material is adapted with the intent of sidestepping it's problematic elements but they have VERY odd ways around it. Like the KKK are in this game, but they just lynch all the fishmen so using that traumatic imagery all the time is fine! There's a Mayan priestess zombie, but you can stab the coloniser after her so it's fine! There's a gay monkey man who's grandfather went to Africa and to fuck a silverback and that is not commented on or critically analysed in any way, but he acts like a race science nazi, so it's fine! Like... They tried! But y'know... Doesn't mean they succeeded like.