The Sinking City 2 Review (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, & PC)

Imagine a situation where the rain has been falling nonstop. You’ve barricaded yourself at home for days. But the rain doesn’t let up. It begins to flood the streets. The waters rise, covering vehicles and rising higher up to the height of most buildings. At what point does it become clear that you have to evacuate? Even if you have to leave your home and everything you’ve known behind? At what point does it become hopeless for anyone still holding on to a sinking city? 

While most of the people in 1920s Arkham have safely evacuated, some are still left behind in the trenches of the flooded streets for one reason or another. The protagonists, Calvin and Fare, are long-term lovers who’ve decided that nonstop rainfall is their cue to try out one of their occult rituals. Everything goes wrong, and hence the mysterious and horrifying story in The Sinking City 2 begins.

No Turning Back Now

It’s immediately apparent that Calvin and Fare are in too deep to quit now. When the city is flooding, and they’re knee-deep in figuring out passage into the Dreamlands. It’s a mystical realm rooted in eldritch horror. Definitely the kind of place you shouldn’t be begging to see.

But Calvin is an occult adventurer, and Faye is just as fascinated by occult rituals. There’s no stopping these two from making bad decisions, even in the wake of a catastrophic event. And so, there are immediately two major events that steal your attention right off the bat. The Sinking City 2 starts strong, with lots of mystery, and only gets more compelling when it introduces more twists and turns down the road.

I’ll certainly leave the unraveling of the story to you, only reassuring you that it’s a worthwhile one to chase through to the end. Even with one ending, it’ll surprise you and leave you reminiscing about it way into the next couple of days and weeks.

Lovers Affair

A huge part of my adoration of the story is the relationship between Calvin and Faye. I love that, at first, we know very little about them. Was their relationship strong? What led them to perform a dangerous ritual during a catastrophic event in the first place? And The Sinking City 2 is gracious enough to fill in the gaps for you. 

During your playthrough, you have revealing moments of conversation between Calvin and Faye. They share deep affection and care for each other, sometimes a little too on the nose. Faye will be worried about Calvin’s safety, inquiring whether he’s been hurt during a fight. And at times it is, indeed, obvious that Calvin has taken damage, which can become annoying when it’s, again, pointed out to you by Faye.

But not all of their interactions are annoying. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed learning more about who Calvin and Faye are to each other, especially because a major part of your ‘mission’ as Calvin is to reunite with Faye. It gives meaning to the lengths you go to rescue Faye.

Nasty Slithers

The lengths you go to are mostly owing to the creepy slithers crawling around Arkham. They have presumably sprung up as a result of the flood. And they come in many shapes and sizes. There are the zombie types, which infect the undead, giving them new, haunting life. 

From humanoid slithers to disgusting crawlies and parasitic creatures, the eldritch horrors that descend on Arkham are aplenty. And they take ranged shots aimed at their weak spots to take them out. Relatively easy, too, because some of the enemies have bulging weak spots you can easily see. Others can be a little tricky to pin down. 

Still, the gunplay is way better in The Sinking City 2 than in the first game. The guns pack a punch, and every shot feels pretty good. It should take one clear shot to stagger enemies. And then you can finish them off with a melee strike or satisfying stomp on the ground. 

Fuel Up

Survival horror fans know the drill by now, though. Ammunition is never enough to go into battles guns blazing. You’ll want to double-check how much ammo you have left before choosing to engage. Fortunately, you can always choose the high road. Dodging works pretty well against most enemy types, allowing you to evade danger for most of your playthrough. 

If you choose to engage, you can still get away in one piece when you conserve ammo and make every shot count. You will also need to balance shooting with melee strikes and stomps. Another workaround is to stack up ammo before forging into a new area. Easier said than done, I know, but not impossible to be prepared more times than not.

You can scour the environment for ammo and health potions. And stock these up in your inventory. But this has another hurdle, where your inventory space can run out. So, you need to upgrade your storage, or ditch whatever supplies are unnecessary. Unfortunately, weapons take up inventory space, too. So, you can’t carry every one of the four weapon types available. You have to pick the most useful in combat.

Switch It Up

Weapons vary between pistols, SMGs, rifles, and rocket launchers. Not all of them are created equal. So, you’ll definitely find preferable ones you’ll want to create room for. Then, stock up on ammo and health supplies. Everything else can be carried based on priority.

But the best workaround is leveling up. Even on the weapons front. You’ll find that upgrading some weapons makes them more powerful, and thus, requires less ammo to take down enemies. 

There are various paths The Sinking City 2 curates for progression. An interesting feature is the Mask you carry with you, which has Faye’s spirit in it. I love that the Mask holds significance to the story, but can also impact combat. You can upgrade the Mask’s various talents, and consequently, influence your reload speeds, damage output, attack power, and more niche stats.

Detective Eye

In the end, you realize that The Sinking City 2 is a deeper game than it initially presents itself to be. It has puzzles, too, that can be pretty complex and exciting to solve. While their design choices may be familiar, unlocking doors, cracking safes, matching patterns, and all, their implementation can surprise you. 

The puzzles aren’t too challenging, but they can engage you for quite a bit and provide a change of pace from exploration and combat. Some of the puzzle-solving also includes a bit of detective work. However, I have to stress that it’s fairly basic and nothing as complex as in The Sinking City. 

This time, you can collect some clues and piece them together to find a solution to a problem. The problem can be a puzzle, but often unrelated to advancing the story. Thus, the puzzle-solving and minimal detective work serve mostly as a side quest rather than an instrumental part of the story or gameplay.

For the Love of Lovecraftian Horror

Real quick, let’s discuss a bit on the Lovecraftian horror theme in The Sinking City 2. It’s stunning, detailed, and brings to life the moody and eerie settings popular with Lovecraftian horror. This isn’t a terrifying experience filled with cheap jump scares. No. The fear factor is in the broody atmosphere. The darkness that envelops the town of Arkham, which makes the claustrophobic halls you explore more terrifying to venture deeper into. 

The best part is that it all looks polished, thanks to Unreal Engine 5. Performance is spot-on. Movement feels smooth. Even the handling of the guns is fluid, especially the audio cues. It can get so quiet that you can hear your heartbeat through your chest because you have a persistent feeling that at any moment, something slimy with tentacles spitting out of its gruesome body will round the corner and begin its relentless pursuit, you poor soul.

Verdict

What’s not to love in The Sinking City 2? For me, I’d say the few missteps that feel more of a personal preference. For instance, making the weapons a part of your inventory space. These are essentials that I would have preferred if they didn’t take up the already limited slots in storage. I also take issue with Faye’s dialogue. She can point out what’s already obvious, completely undermining “Show don’t tell.” 

But these are minor quabbles compared to everything that Frogwares does right. The atmosphere and environments are unsettling, perfectly matching the gruesome designs of the Slithers. It feels damning to be stuck in Arkham, the streets flooding, and yet lacking the option of making a run for it because the love of your life is still trapped somewhere in the real world, perhaps the mystical Dreamlands realm. You swear you must find her, no matter what. Even when your ammo runs out in the middle of tackling a crawling monster. Even when the light at the end of the tunnel is barely visible through the darkness.