No use building up to it. No use trying to quietly lead the reader to it. This is it. The big one. The Big One. The Cthulhu one. I confess this means nothing to me. In some shadowy corner of my brain, a dusty place my conscious tosses useless information, I dimly understand Cthulhu possesses weighty importance in the minds of Lovecraft lore lovers. Or perhaps I'm getting old. Maybe that corner just needs a cleaning. Maybe it's just a leftover teddy bear, aged into misshapen, lumpy, tentacled malevolence... Sorry, don't know what came over me there. Fans of Arkham Horror have been speculating for ages when the giant green squid will finally see screen time. The time is now. Let's get into the review.
“The Drowned City” is classic Arkham Horror in more ways than one. We begin with story. The opening scenario has players doing One Last Job (yes, that one) for a curio shop owner they owe a debt to. He tasks you with finding a lost shipment, presumed stolen by one of Arkham's gangs. You head out onto the nighttime streets—Eastside, Downtown, Miskatonic University, and other districts from the core box—looking to parley with dangerous gangsters. You ultimately find the lost shipment, but it isn't without a cost. Yes, you read the tea leaves correctly: it was not One Last Job. And so into the wild blue yonder (that's the non-spoiler place; the real place has more ominous spires and alien glyphs) you go to fulfill one more One Last Job. It's not an easy job. If you fail, indeed the previous job was the last one. If you succeed you will have experienced a pulp tale of alien exploration and adventure, from the seas to the skies, and won... Play on to find out.
But “The Drowned City” is classic in more than just pulp fundamentals. The campaign returns to a simpler state—of objectives, of quantity of text, of story progression, and several other areas. The campaign is unique, but it is likewise reminiscent of “The Dunwich Legacy” or “Path to Carcosa”, more so than recent, experimental campaigns like “The Scarlet Keys” or “Edge of the Earth”. This is not to say the latter campaigns are good or bad, better or worse, only that “The Drowned City” is a reining in, a back-to-basics that helps keep the game as a whole close to a baseline. It offers experienced players a reminder what the game used to be (and still is) and new players the chance to experience the game in a way similar to but not the same as 'old school Arkham'. It's an introductory product ten years—ten years!!--into the game's history.
Nothing funky or wild, the six new investigators are mostly straight-cut characters with straight-forward special abilities. You can tell this by the limited amount of text on each card compared to recent expansions. Michael McGlen is a rogue gangster with guns, guns, and more guns. He seems to have burned a few bridges though, his 'shoot 'em first and let god sort 'em out attitude' close on his heels. Lucius Galloway is a poet (naturally) quick on his feet. He easily slips away from enemies, grabbing clues along the way. But if he doesn't satisfy that clue itch, then... Marion Tavares is an event-based guardian. Cards move quickly in and out of hand, but can likewise move only out of hand if she gets too independent. In keeping with sleight of hand, George Barnaby the lawyer comes in two classes: Survivor and Seeker, each with different stats and abilities. And our mystic is Agatha Crane. Likewise coming in two classes, chaos tokens are her legerdemain, as sealing, canceling, and ignoring them is key to gameplay.
For lore lovers concerned the game's designers would drop the ball and implement Cthulhu in some non-canonical, disrespectful fashion, don't know what to tell you. Never read the stories. What I can say is that the power level felt high. Cthulhu even has its own prologue scenario. A big, looming, tentacled thing arrives on the table in gameplay and art. It kicked our collective asses the first time. Cthulhu hit like a tank. I prefer a couple of the other final bosses but would still rank him high. He felt big and was fun—the ultimate litmus test, after all. Wait. All this DEI shit has got me thinking. Cthulhu = he??? Maybe she? How would you know? Dangly bits between the... tentacles? Sings in a baritone? Leaves the toilet seat up? Maybe he's an 'it'? Maybe a zi/zir? Better check his Twitter profile... No, nothing. Just a fuzzy monochrome green blotch. No rainbow flags or anything... Wait! Oh my god!!! Maybe he's Dark-MAGA?!?!? Maybe he represents all the authoritarian capitalist patriarchal overlords out there, secretly pulling strings... What? My turn? Sorry. Let's see, first action...
In the end, “The Drowned City” is more Arkham goodness. For players who weren't around when the game launched almost a decade ago (a decade!!), it would seem designers intended the campaign to be a retro introductory experience (especially now the original campaigns will start to rotate to out-of-print). While possessing singular story, scenarios, investigators, etc., it also has a certain simplicity, a certain streamlining, a certain limitation on unique mechanisms which makes things welcoming, accessible regardless new or old. Experienced players who are accustomed to wrenches being thrown into the works may be stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop. This isn't to say there are no surprises or twists, only that in comparison to several other campaigns there is an austere quality to progression, from writing to scenario goals. As stated, I'm not familiar with the place Cthulhu holds in the minds of Lovecraft readers, but can say it's a Big Boss. With his own board, designers didn't stint on size... Now, where's my tentacle whip? Need a spot of self-flagellation to really drive away those demons of privilege...
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