Recent reviews by ⇋ Anti-Midas ⇌

Ignore the culture war tourists, this is a fantastic game and well worth your time if like boomer shooters at all.

What is Dredge? Dredge is a Cthulu Mythos inspired fishing game, in which you fill your hold with denizens aquatic, some normal, most not.

The Good, the Bad, The Ugly (and some nitpicks)
TooLongDidntRead? I still recommend it, but be aware that this isn't as much of a horror game most buyers would like.

★ The Good ★
• The ambiance of this game is fantastic, from the uniquely styled portraits of the townsfolk, the intense suffocating fog, and the sounds of things unseen. Dredge really envelops you with a overwhelming tension during the first quarter of a play-through, that sadly doesn't stick around.
• The locations are well realized, especially the first three zones as intended. (Marrows -> Gale Cliffs -> Stellar Basin)
• The mystery of the Collector and the games overarching story was well done.
• The aberration fish were really well designed (with a few exceptions).

✬ The Bad ✬
• The fishing mini-games started out fresh and interesting, but did not have enough variation to hold interest during the whole game. There are a limited number of fishing/dredging mini-games present, and you will have seen all of them by the second area.
• I often don't advocate for gating upgrades this hard in games, but Dredge would have done well to limit your top speed and light until later. It was easy enough to "grind" (fish until you catch all the aberrations in one area, not even grinding really) until you're so well off you're only restricted by the rarity of research parts.
• The lack of a locked difficulty didn't work out. I don't remember where I saw it, but the developers recommend sleeping more often for an easier experience, and vice versa for a more challenging experience. Giving the players the ability to choose so freely renders the drawbacks of low sleep a nuisance, rather than something tense. I think they should've opted for a traditional difficulty selection
• This game is rough for completionists. By the time I finished the game proper, I still had 15~ research parts to snag before I could research everything the game had to offer. I had to resort to exiting to main menu and loading to refresh the shops enough times to get everything I needed. I'm ranking this as Bad, rather than Ugly, as not everyone wants to 100% the games they play.

✰ The Ugly ✰
• There is nowhere near enough unsettling occurrences both in the towns and the open water. Once you let your stress level hit high for 1 in-game day, you've seen around 60% of the games spooky stuff.
• Tying into the above, not having distinct weather effects were a massive missed opportunity. Imagine having a giant storm envelop the area and a quest sends you out during the pitch black night to catch a rare fish. There's nothing like that in the game, just some light rain and fog.
• The first area of the game (Marrows) received quite a bit of polish, probably to show off during the demo. The other areas are lacking anywhere near the amount of time invested, and the inevitable comparison hurts them. As an example there is a NPC (Traveling Merchant) that you interact with at 4/5 of the games total areas. And nothing happens to her to indicate she's affected by all this eldritch nonsense going on. Really quite a let down. Gale cliffs has three total static NPCs, Stellar Basin has one, Twisted Strand has one, and Devil's spine has one. They give you some fairly simple quests, but are otherwise cardboard cutouts in terms of impact.

~ The Nitpicks ~
• The "danger" of the Devil's Spine was not at all scary, and just kind of annoying.
• I didn't care for the NPC in Stellar Basin trying to explain what's going on. You can't science away the mystery of eldritch corruption without consequences, of which there was none for the Researcher
• Roundabout spoilers: I wanted to see more tragic things happen, some big things. Imagine you wake up in Twisted Strand and you look back to Greater Morrow and it's just gone. No trace of it, like it didn't exist. That would really add some mystery that this is game is sorely lacking outside of the Collector
• I would've liked to see more drawbacks from using the abilities you learn as you turn in Relics. Instead of a little stress, how about locking your stress at a minimum value for a day, but you can't sleep for the next 12 hours. Risk v reward decision making, instead of just using them on cool-down.
• Some of the aberration fish were just stupid. Vortex Interloper, really? Just a fish being sucked spiraling into a another dimension? Dumb and immersion breaking. (This is the nitpick section after all.)

Do I recommend it? Yes... but.
It's a great fishing game, with some unique threats to keep you on your toes. The tension doesn't last however and the horror of the game isn't as well realized as it could've been.

Great Music, great reactive gameplay, great graphics. What are you waiting for?