Large in scope, The Sinking City has a huge emphasis on story. Despite the engrossing ‘Lovecraftian’ experience, it’s hard to fully enjoy it for hours on end due to numerous issues. Nonetheless, this adventure is quite interesting; and deserves some praise.

“The half-submerged city of Oakmont is gripped by supernatural forces. You’re a private investigator, and you have to uncover the truth of what has possessed the city… and the minds of its inhabitants.”

This story definitely lends itself to an amazing atmosphere. But it’s one that doesn’t translate to amazing visuals, at least in this Nintendo Switch version.

The environmental graphics are rough around the edges, unfortunately, with character models losing a significant amount of texture. In fairness, this becomes much less noticeable whenever you traverse at a fast speed through the open-world environments. But, considering the game’s heavy emphasis on story and clue solving, this doesn’t happen very often. The character animations are also appalling, which is a plague on The Sinking City. The performance is generally unpalatable, with screen tearing and stuttering. I’ve heard phenomenal things about the PlayStation 4 version, though.

Ultimately, it’s really more of an inconvenience than anything. This is not the sort of game that needs to run at 60 fps. It’s manageable if you want to play The Sinking City and the Nintendo Switch is your only option. The voice acting isn’t bad by any means, but unlike the upcoming “The Outer Worlds” game, it’s nothing too out of this world. That said, it is quite befitting for the title. It adds to the fascinating, replayable adventure.

Prominent amongst the PC gaming streaming scene currently, The Sinking City is a very good game that was awkwardly converted to run on the Nintendo Switch. It was unsettling for me to sit down for hours on end to review. It also launched during a stretch where a lot of new games are releasing to challenge my attention. But I’ll probably revisit The Sinking City during quieter times, and when it’s hopefully been patched.