The Sinking City 2 Review

Overview

The Sinking City 2 takes Frogwares’ Lovecraft-inspired series in a dramatically different direction, replacing much of the first game’s open-world detective structure with a tighter survival-horror experience.

Exploration, puzzles, limited resources, inventory management, weapon upgrades, and dangerous creatures now form the core of the adventure. There are clear influences from modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but the flooded streets of Arkham and the game’s obsession with cosmic horror give it an identity of its own.

It is a substantial change for returning players, yet the more focused design ultimately suits the series well. The sequel feels more deliberate, more threatening, and considerably more polished than its predecessor.

Story and Setting

Players control Calvin Rafferty, an occult adventurer whose search for a way to save Faye Bennett eventually brings him into the increasingly unnatural city of Arkham.

What begins as a personal mystery quickly expands into something much larger. Flooded districts, strange rituals, disappearing residents, grotesque creatures, and forces that seem to exist beyond ordinary reality make it clear that Arkham’s disaster is anything but natural.

The story is at its strongest when it allows the environment to reveal what happened. Abandoned apartments, journals, ritual sites, damaged hospitals, forgotten laboratories, and disturbing scenes gradually build a picture of a city that was already troubled before the supernatural horror arrived.

Calvin and Faye also give the narrative a more personal foundation than a simple attempt to stop an ancient evil. Their relationship keeps the story grounded while the events surrounding them become increasingly bizarre.

Not every character or idea receives enough time to fully develop, and the ending can feel surprisingly abrupt considering how much mystery the game builds. Even so, the journey remains compelling throughout most of the campaign.

Gameplay

Survival horror is now the central focus, and nearly every system has been redesigned around it.

Ammunition, healing items, crafting materials, and inventory space all matter. Exploring an optional room might provide enough ammunition for the next encounter, while wasting several bullets on an enemy that could have been avoided can leave Calvin poorly prepared later.

The limited inventory encourages players to think about what they carry rather than collecting everything without consequence. Weapons and equipment can also be improved as the campaign progresses, giving exploration a useful sense of progression.

Combat is considerably better than in the original game. Firearms feel more responsive, movement is smoother, and dodging gives Calvin an important defensive option when monsters close the distance.

Enemy designs also complement the survival-horror structure. Some creatures rush aggressively, others attack from awkward angles, and Slither-infected enemies can create particularly unpleasant situations by interacting with corpses around them.

The system is not flawless. Fighting several monsters in cramped rooms can become messy, melee combat is less convincing than the gunplay, and some later encounters rely too heavily on waves of enemies. However, the improved shooting and resource pressure make combat consistently more engaging than it was in the first game.

Exploration and Investigation

Frogwares has reduced the detective mechanics without completely abandoning them.

Optional investigations are scattered throughout Arkham, encouraging players to read documents, examine strange objects, connect clues, and investigate areas that are not necessary for completing the main story.

These mysteries are particularly effective because they provide practical rewards. Solving an optional case can uncover ammunition, resources, upgrades, new routes, or information that makes later situations easier to survive.

The result is a clever connection between investigation and survival. Searching a suspicious building is not simply about collecting additional lore; there is often a genuine gameplay advantage waiting at the end.

Puzzles follow a similar philosophy. Environmental clues, documents, symbols, objects, and Calvin’s investigative abilities usually provide enough information to reach the solution without turning every puzzle into a straightforward waypoint exercise.

Players expecting the elaborate detective work of the original may find this approach simplified, but the investigation systems fit naturally into the sequel’s faster and more focused structure.

Level Design

Arkham is divided into more controlled environments rather than functioning as one enormous open world, and this is one of the sequel’s biggest improvements.

Flooded streets connect decaying apartments, hospitals, churches, academic buildings, underground passages, and other increasingly disturbing locations. Individual areas are large enough to reward exploration while remaining carefully designed around shortcuts, locked doors, optional rooms, and recognizable landmarks.

Backtracking is regularly encouraged. A previously inaccessible door or route may become useful after finding the correct key, clue, or item, while revisiting familiar locations can reveal resources that were missed earlier.

The best areas have the interconnected quality associated with classic survival horror. Players gradually learn how buildings fit together, unlock faster routes, and become familiar with locations that initially felt confusing or threatening.

There is some environmental repetition, and the game does not always allow players to return freely to every earlier location once the story progresses. That makes certain sections feel more restrictive than they initially appear.

Even with those limitations, the move away from the oversized city of the original allows Frogwares to create environments with much stronger pacing and greater attention to detail.

Visuals and Performance

Unreal Engine 5 gives Arkham an appropriately miserable and impressive appearance.

Wet streets reflect broken lights, flooded buildings disappear into fog, abandoned interiors are filled with unsettling details, and grotesque creatures look particularly disturbing when they emerge from the darkness at close range.

The visual direction matters more than pure technical spectacle. Arkham looks like a real city that has been slowly consumed by water, decay, violence, and something far more unnatural.

Character models and environmental detail are noticeably improved over the previous game, although facial animation and some character movements can still look stiff compared with the biggest modern horror productions.

PC requirements are also demanding. The official recommended specification lists an RTX 4070 Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XT, 32 GB of RAM, and a modern CPU for a 1440p, 60 FPS target at the Medium preset. An SSD is required, with approximately 70 GB of available storage.

Performance on capable hardware is generally solid, but occasional stutters and frame-time inconsistencies can appear, particularly when moving through some of the larger environments. Lower-end systems may need to rely heavily on reduced settings or temporal upscaling to maintain a consistent frame rate.

The game therefore looks impressive, but its hardware requirements are considerably higher than players might expect from a relatively focused survival-horror experience.

Audio

Sound is one of the most effective parts of The Sinking City 2.

Arkham is rarely completely quiet. Water moves through abandoned streets, damaged buildings creak, creatures make distant noises, and subtle environmental sounds frequently suggest that something may be nearby before the player can actually see it.

This makes exploration uncomfortable even during sections where there is no immediate danger.

Weapons have enough impact to make combat satisfying, while the monsters produce appropriately unpleasant sounds that make close encounters feel more threatening.

The soundtrack is used carefully rather than constantly overwhelming the environment. Atmospheric music builds tension during exploration before becoming more aggressive during major confrontations and supernatural events.

Voice performances are also convincing enough to support the game’s smaller, more personal cast, helping the story remain grounded even when the events around Calvin become increasingly surreal.

The Sinking City 2 Review – Final Verdict

The Sinking City 2 succeeds because Frogwares was willing to rethink what the series should be rather than simply making a larger version of the original.

The move toward survival horror gives combat, exploration, inventory management, puzzles, and environmental storytelling a much clearer purpose. Arkham is an excellent setting, optional investigations provide meaningful rewards, and the stronger level design makes exploring the flooded city consistently enjoyable.

The sequel does lose some of the detective freedom that made the original unusual. Certain combat encounters become repetitive, some technical roughness remains, and the story ends just as several of its ideas appear ready to develop further.

Nevertheless, The Sinking City 2 is a confident and atmospheric survival-horror game that understands what makes Lovecraftian horror effective. It may borrow familiar ideas from Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but Frogwares combines them with enough investigative elements and cosmic horror to create something distinctly its own.

The Sinking City 2 Review Score

8.2/10

The Sinking City 2 successfully transforms Frogwares’ Lovecraftian series into a focused survival-horror experience. Excellent atmosphere, rewarding exploration, stronger combat, and memorable environments outweigh some repetitive encounters, demanding PC requirements, and an unexpectedly abrupt conclusion.