And the depiction of Innsmouth is still better than the horrendous Stuart Gordon movie (Dagon). But the atrocious writing ruins any attempts at horror and immersion here.

Every character and their every line of dialogue is a cliche. Every cutscenes is a borefest. The writing neither imitates Lovecraft's style nor even the way people talked at the beginning of the 20th century. And having stuff like "Gilman Hotel" with its owner Charlie Gilman is like something out of a parody. Oh yeah, we fish-people like to have fish-related names so you could see there's something fishy about us. In addition, the game expects you to read logs, which are just as horrendously written. If this game was a book, nobody would've ever read it. I gave up at the point where Zadok was retelling me the premise of 'The Shadow over Innsmouth', at which point I questioned what I was even doing, listening to this bastardized version of a great book instead of just revisiting the actual book.

I'm not gonna address the gameplay much, which seems fine for a stealth game, but I'm not usually into stealth games unless they do something unique and cool like Tenchu or MGS. But there is this dissonance between the story and the gameplay that manifests in different ways. For example, there's a million of locked doors. And I like to check every corner of every level for the fear of missing something (especially in adventure games), and the phrase "it won't budge" has become a major annoyance in the little time I played this. Interacting with objects just to hear the character say obvious things like "it's a stove" is also making the game look silly, thus reducing the horror. And what's up with that prologue where they send you into a house full of armed cultists without a gun? It just doesn't make sense and takes you out of the world. I felt the same way with all the rude Innsmouthians that straight up insult you without the game letting you retaliate. I'd much rather they just grunted and walked away, which I think would only add to the sense alienation and suspicion.

I think, while CoC: DCotE (what an acronym!) is a better game, Darkness Within, which I reviewed recently, is an infinitely better Lovecraftian horror adventure. I'd rather play that game with a guide than spend any time on this without one. Plus I've heard it becomes very action-y in the second half and that the action here is not very good.