I could believe that part of him was down there, like a man-eating blob of flesh the size of a car or something, but not the whole thing.
The Cathedral of flesh is actually a good and compelling idea. It's the lives under New York that damages suspension of disbelief. The fact that it is godlike in power and requires your PCs to completely give themselves over to the actual capital G Christian god to defeat is the annoying part, to me.
Actually, I found the whole 3rd generation vampire god thing to be annoying. When they were active they were, explicitly, not ruling the world, humans with swords were a threat to them, and several of them were explicitly eaten by younger vampires. They weren't on the tank nukes level. Powerful yes, but killable.
Then Ghenna comes along and they're effectively invincible deities that no one can hope to fight.
Crucible of God sucks because the ending is literally "Tzimisce takes over the world and then God kills him and all the other vampires except maybe the PCs."
If it were a Greek Drama, they'd have Zeus descend from a crane.
It doesn't help that the rules given require that the PCs have high humanity and other Paths don't count if they want even a hope of surviving.
Nightshade suffers from a similar problem.
Wormwood, while having God kill all the vampires, no saving throw, at least has the potential for interesting character drama. It just suffers from the fact that all the suggested methods of creating drama are incredibly stupid.
The only one that actually empowers the PCs is Fair is Foul. It still has the stupid god kills all the vampires plot, but it also leaves room to diablerize Caine (the seven-fold curse being a recommended optional rule) and that is, in fact, the default goal for many characters involved and potentially attainable by the PCs. Of course, in any event, they all still die horribly unless they get regular doses of Lillith's blood, which probably involves joining her, rather than, you know, turning her your blood-bonded slave just long enough to transform yourselves and then killing her when she's no longer useful. But, you know, that's still a possibility permitted by the scenario.
Honestly, I'd be happy to excise the godlike plot device Antediluvians and keep the very powerful but enough guys with swords are still a threat Antediluvians from 1e and 2e.
