I just got this game for my birthday yesterday and played it with my wife and another couple. It was really hard ! But we still had tons of fun. We missed one really important rule: advance the doom track for every investigator devoured. We were basically losing 1-2 investigators every round and had only one left in the investigator stack when Cthulhu finally awakened. Miraculously, we were able to defeat the Ancient One.
I hear a lot of people say this game is easy, but it was downright brutal for us. We started off with three Midnight effects: two of them dealt damage and one added a monster. Combined with Cthulhu's ability to decrease maximum stamina and sanity, we lost investigators very quickly. Do you think it was our setup, or do we just need to play more?
I can't wait to play again!