This game should really have a big warning on its page telling potential buyers that it is not finished.
So in lack of this let this review be a warning: The game ends abruptly about halfway in.

Apparently what I've gathered from various reviews, comments, and developer posts, this game was funded by kickstarter and the developers ran out of time and/or money about halfway through and had to make a decision between forcing an abrupt finale, or leave the game on a cliffhanger, and they chose for the latter. Is there going to be a sequel? Will they finish the game through DLC or updates? Who knows, but as it stands right now you end the game with a sudden cut scene telling you that your character is about to do the next step in 1 of the 4 quests you have open and then it cuts to credits.

The developers claim that despite the game ending on a cliffhanger it is a complete and finished game, but I respectfully disagree. When the strong point of your game is its story and roleplaying aspect then it's simply not finished until the story is finished.

A real shame because I was enjoying the game, and I would have loved to see where it was going.

As much as I wish this would be a good Lovecratian game - it lacks in so many places and the developers have all but abandoned the UNFINISHED game.

Yes, please be aware, this game is UNFNISHED, its more like a playable Early Access / Beta, that juts got abbandoned. The Devs work on (I think) at least three other games that will release this year, but ripped off every buyer of this game.

Why it got so high metascore? Because testers normally don`t play the game through - so there is no mention, that this game HAS NO ENDING. Really, it just stops in the middle. Its like a film who develops so many branches of the story, and then it's over - without tying together just a fraction of the storylines it just createt.

Spoiler: You go on a hunt for the Necronomicon. You also know where to look next. Then the game ends.

So you ask yourself:

Do you want to invest time into a game, that gives a story that just stops - and where it is clear, that the Devs WILL NOT CONTINUE the game? The last large update is now 5 months old, and there are still gamebreaking bugs, crashes and, well, the unfinished game. The game fells like you are 1/2 (updated, to be fair - half the game, not 1/3) through the game, when it just ends.

The whole build up, half the characters and places are completely wasted.

The combat is clunky and uninspiring, repetetive and somtimes just unfair. If you pick the wrong premade character, you miss out on a lot of content (go occult/scientific!). The game does also a terrible job on explaning what to do, how to access important skills and so on. Also, there is a lot of unneccessary backtracking in the game. You will run through the same four screens for quite some time - back and forth - with also inexplainable long loading times between the screens.

If this would be an early access, there would be time and hope that this game really becomes a great game - but this is just a demo, for the full price.

It has great potential, the story sucks you in quickly, BUT this is also the ultimate downfall of the game, as the story is not told completely. Just think about your most loved Lovecraft story - and think how much you would like it, if you could only ever read the first half or 1/3.

And then think if you want to spend money on this?
I will avoid the games of the devs, until I am sure the games are really finished.

Hard to know where to start without appearing like a steam review cliche. Of all the games I recently played I would go as far as to say I loved this game. All the way up until the final (unknown to me at the time) third. It really isn't finished. If there ever was a game more deserved of getting finished, this would be it. Beautiful art style, compelling (albeit unfinished) story, fantastic Lovecraftian lore inclusiveness and great "10 more minutes hook" all until the proverbial string starts to fray. I hope this is as honest as I intended. I did enjoy it for the most part but I can't become an enabler of this kind of precedent in game making where it is acceptable to release an unfinished piece. Who would buy 2/3 of a bridge and be happy to swim the rest of the way? I hope the Devs give this game more love.

This game is like an extremely atmospheric tabletop RPG campaign that is run by the world's worst DM.

I am not gonna spend time on discussing bugs and glitches like many other reviews - the 1.1 version I played was mostly free of them apart from minor annoyances. The game is still really janky but that is not the issue.

The issue is the game's mechanics. This is one of the games that tries so hard to be HARD and HORRIFIC that it ends up being annoying instead. It's full of frustrating mechanics that do nothing but provide the player with unavoidable penalities that ruin the experience. Combat is the most notorious in this regard.
It's turn based and fairly easy, especially since balance is non-existant. Melee weapons are easy to come by, require no ammunition and do great damage. Most enemies are melee focused and can cross the battlefield in a single turn anyway. Ranged weapons rely on ammunition that is scarce and do a lot less damage in most cases. Spells are so ridiculously weak that there is no reason to bother with them for the most part, they provide minor benefits but cost sanity and also health in some cases AND can backfire.
This means your best bet is to do melee combat and easily kill everything the game throws ate you, right? Wrong. There are unavoidable penalties for entering combat. You receive 'angst' which will give your character negative attributes in the long run. It doesn't matter if you win, or lose, if you emerge without a scratch or lose all your friends you get the same amount of angst points. A completely meaningless mechanic. The only way to avoid this is to use stealth (which requires to to make a certain character type) but not all fights can be avoided anyway so you might as well not bother.

On top of angst you also have a sanity meter which gets drained very fast and not just by your own spells. Many enemy types make you lose sanity just by encountering them (and I am not talking about cosmic horrors but basic, early game enemies). To make the game playable this is offset by the fact that witnessing actual horrors in the game makes you lose a comparably low amount of sanity. You end up in a situation where simply seeing a creature you have fought and killed dozens of before results in the same sanity loss as witnessing someone being torn apart in front of your eyes. It's just dumb.

The best part of the game is walking through the city and interacting with it, investigating things but even here there are the signs of the same overly controlling, unimaginative dungeon master. NPCs you can recruit represent extremely min-maxed and hypercompetent character types with overblown stats. Wanted to play a cool occultist? Well too bad, here is the NPC who does the same but is simply better at it than you could ever be.
Chhoices are also not really interesting. One time recruiting an NPC made me lose another follower permanently for no reason. The new NPC randomly dies in a cutscene giving sanity loss as well. So I reloaded my game and did not allow him to join. Guess what? He still ran in at the exact same moment and got killed just so I could still get the sanity loss the game was itching to dish out.
Th character creator is very cool with a lot of amazing choices and skills and feats but half of them won't matter at all. I chose to play as a 'depraved occultist' which in theory would have provided my character with some seductive options. In practice this meant sacrificing a skill point in a major skill for one dialogue option in the entire 8 hours I played that basically meant nothing. It's just shallow and the game would have been better without it.

Resource managment is the same. It's all over the place with contradictory mechanics and no balance in sight. You can hire a bodyguard who will fight and die for you for 20 cigs a day but a night's rest costs 40. Your lamp runs out of oil in real time but running is disabled while it is equipped. Your (hidden) hunger timer is real time as well, punishing you for exploring (which is fine) and for the janky controls of the game (which is not). Health is easy to restore and being wounded carries no real penalties. Sanity on the other hand is very hard to come by and losing even half of it hits your character with unavoidable mental states that wrestle even more control out of the player's hands. Restoration items cause addiction to annoy you even more. The one character immune to panicking due to sanity loss in the game will go berserk on his own. The list goes on, but I will stop here.

I really wanted to like this. There is an amazing game buried inside of this one but it's not worth to look for it. Instead of cosmic horror you get constant annoyance. Wrestling control away from the player every few minutes just so you can tell them 'NOW YOU ARE CRAZY AND TERRIFIED' is not good storytelling and it makes for an even worse RPG.

Avoid it.

Just to preface this, I have played virtually every adaptation of Lovecraft in video game format. It's one of my favourite fictional universes and the concept of otherworldly horror is one I am yet to find tiring. Below you will find many reviews of the game complaining about bugs, lack of polish, performance bla bla bla. As other RPG fans have, I have had to suffer through these things for many years in order to experience some of the best this genre has to offer. In the defence of the team that has put this together, I think that this is a noble effort for one of the hardest things to properly implement - a reactive RPG that is able to anticipate the different paths players will want to go down.

But none of this would matter if there wasn't a decent game at the core. The atmosphere and visual design is truly fantastic and brings the setting to life. The writing is solid, period-appropriate and adds to the experience, a commendable effort from a Turkish studio. I am in awe that such a small indie studio with limited funds was able to put together world and character designs of this quality, it is mind-boggling. I also have rarely seen a game so responsive at every level to choices that are made in terms of equipment, skill choices, and the belief system of the main character. Even the fact that I had a machete equipped in my offhand came up in a random encounter on the world map! I think they absolutely nailed the mood and feel, as well as the core themes of pen and paper Lovecraft.

In essence, Lovecraftian pen and paper systems simulate a character's slow decline into mental illness and eventual death as they come into contact with various horrors. This will be relatively familiar to anyone who has played Darkest Dungeon. Your sanity meter will be impacted by combat and story events and if it gets too low you are at risk of gaining one of the various mental illnesses (which have their own dialogue options). In addition, as your Angst increases your character will gain defects, although these are sadly poorly balanced at the moment, as is the perk system. It is one of those rare RPGs that rewards you almost entirely for quest completion while discouraging grind. Combat is generally best avoided if you can help it, as it is not generally beneficial.

In terms of the use of skill checks, exploration, and emphasis on mood/roleplaying, one of the closest analogues to this game would be Planescape: Torment. A game that's as much a mood piece as a genre entry, as well as synthesising RPG and adventure game mechanics. Hell, it even has the game's spell animations. It's also borrowed the scrounging and crafting elements of Arcanum. Searching through bins brought a nostalgic tear to my eye. There is a lot of reactivity, the different skills open up new dialogues and quest solutions, and it just feels good to experience. The economy works pretty well. It is possible to break it, but not to an insane degree, and there are expensive items worth saving up for, as you can only afford maybe 2-3 major items that break the bank.

The combat system is probably the largest sticking point of the game. It is pretty basic and not all that inspired. The tactics generally revolve around surrounding and hacking to death the nearest enemy. Enemies do so much damage it is all about having the tankiest character draw the enemies attention while everyone else blasts and slashes away. At least going a non-combat build is viable because the companions you get are generally very strong and useful in combat. While melee, firearms, and occult are all viable, the way enemies behave and the lack of tactical depth tends to reduce the variety of the experience, making it more of a chore, outside of a few set-piece boss battles.

This game isn't without caveats. The quests are not always necessarily clearly explained and this can make progression difficult. As long as you pay attention and talk to everyone and read documents you generally shouldn't have too much trouble, but soft-locking is a possibility. The crashes are nigh-constant due to performance issues, and this is also very annoying. Probably the biggest caveat of all is that this game's story, while it has an ending, does not provide closure. Your character has more to do, and if this is something that you won't be able to deal with, this might not be the game for you. In my opinion, the most pressing issue is increased density of quests, especially in later areas. and more high-level skill checks to reward specialisation.

If you like Lovecraft and RPGs, I unequivocally recommend this game. Its spirit and world-building capture the setting so much better than previous poor attempts. The flavour and feel of the game is first-rate. There are moments where I was both amazed and pleasantly surprised at the scenarios in this game. Support these bros and help this game achieve its full, proper realisation.

I have finished the game.

At first I was in awe, the game was just perfect. The atmosphere, the story, variety of character builds...

But it turns out the game is unfinished. The last part of the game was total crap. Really bad attempt to wrap up the game. Many quests remain unfinished, including the main quest. I do not know what to say. I will remove this comment if Cultic Games actually finishes the game with patches in the future. But in the current state, it is just a one ~20 hours long bad joke. So sorry.

This game had a lot of promise. But persistent bugs, the tedious and unbalanced nature of combat, a gutted spell system, and an incomplete story had me waiting until a future update to do a full playthrough.

However, I've recently found out that the story is being abandoned by the developers and the game will remain incomplete.

Don't bother picking this game up, unless you like stories that cut halfway through without a proper conclusion. You would also only be buying this game for the story, as the gameplay leaves much to be desired and certainly isn't enough to entice you to buy a $30 game.

Given this game's incomplete and buggy nature, I wouldn't recommend buying this unless it was on sale for $5.

A perfect example to why kickstarter is a real gamble.

They set the bar way too high for themselves and ran out of money. What we got was half a game. Half a game with great writing and design. The reason a lot of people are bummed about this is not because the game is bad, it's because it's arguably the best Lovecraftian game on the market AND UNFINISHED.

Edit: Oh, almost forgot. They are working on their new title, so ♥♥♥♥ Stygian I suppose.

If you're looking at this game on sale and wondering if its worth it considering the mixed reviews, then I would say after a single 25 hour play through In my humble opinion this is a must buy if the below two things are true :

You Lovecraft and you enjoy old style point and click adventure games with turn based combat.

Yes its a bit clunky, buggy and obscure in some aspects and it does end a bit abruptly and feels unfinished sometimes but and its a big Shoggoth butt :

It just oozes with atmosphere, ambiance and Lovecraftian authenticity and you cant help but admire the ambition of it.

The art style, music, characters, dialogue, story it was really captivating for me and I just got caught up in it and became totally engrossed and was so happy to see pretty much all of Lovecrafts major works represented.

Unfortunately this game had some troubled development and it appears development is probably permanently ended which is such a shame but don't let that madness put you off feasting on all that has been laid before you.

What a complete disappointment.
The game starts off so great, and I couldnt figure out why it wasnt rated higher.
Then suddenly the combat spikes out of nowhere, and it feels like theres really no skill or tactic, and the fact that I tried to make a scientist build worked against me. It feels like there's a particular build you have to do to make it through. I don't know. Role playing should be about options.
It's a real shame; becuase the look and the writing of the story is so good -- but the combat is complete garbage. I like a challenge; but come on. So so disappointing.