The Sinking City 2

The short version

Frogwares trades the first game's sprawling open-world detective work for tight, Resident-Evil-flavored survival horror — and mostly nails it. The Sinking City 2 is a more focused, more confident game than its messy 2019 predecessor, a Lovecraftian nightmare that can genuinely go tentacle-to-tentacle with modern Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Twenty-two hours in, the dread had its hooks deep in us. The clunky combat and a flat emotional story are the only things keeping it out of the genre's top tier.

Story

A ritual to reach the fabled Dreamlands goes catastrophically wrong, leaving Calvin Rafferty's partner Faye in a coma and Calvin himself with amnesia — and, not coincidentally, the waters of 1920s Arkham begin to rise. It's a standalone story; you're walking into something already in motion, and the mystery of what came before is part of the pull. The Lovecraftian material is the strong half: it grounds ideas from The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At the Mountains of Madness in a genuinely oppressive world, and mythos fans will find references and Easter eggs layered throughout.

The weaker half, and reviewers keep landing here, is the human drama. Some of the most memorable moments come from what desperate people did to each other in the flood — a surgeon experimenting on those seeking shelter, a hotel bacchanal turned bloodbath. But the central Calvin-and-Faye throughline lands flat, and every time the game pulls back from cosmic horror to focus on its human leads, the energy sags. The eldritch terror sings; the love story doesn't.

Gameplay

This is a full pivot from the original. Gone is the open-world investigation; in its place is tight, combat-focused survival horror that borrows shamelessly and smartly from the best. Resident Evil 2 remake's color-coded maps, safe rooms, item boxes, and — the clever bit — crafting recipes that share resources between ammo and health, forcing genuinely agonizing decisions about what you need most to push deeper. Inventory management is real tension here, and letting your bag fill up at the wrong moment can leave you sprinting for a safe room with monsters closing in.

The combat itself is the sticking point. It's weighty, but in the wrong ways — clunky enough that reviewers and our own hands agreed running is often the smarter option than fighting. It works well enough to keep the tension high, but it never feels good the way the games it's channeling do. The other nag is sameness: across the four-to-five main areas (a hotel, a hospital, the drowned city, a rotting fish market), the environments and encounters can start to blur, and the McGuffin structure that drags you between them is the least interesting thing about the trip.

Visuals & Performance

Unreal Engine 5 doing atmospheric heavy lifting — the game is absolutely dripping with dread, and the visuals and audio amplify every flooded street and half-submerged horror. Monster design is unsettling and gleefully gruesome, and the flooded Arkham early hours evoke the best of the Silent Hill 2 remake's urban dread. It performs well, too, which is no small thing given Frogwares' history — this is a far more technically sound release than the original ever managed at launch.

Craft — 7.8

Excellent atmosphere, smart survival-horror systems, and a genuine step up in focus and polish from the first game. Held back squarely by combat that's clunky rather than satisfying and level design that occasionally repeats itself.

Hold — 7.6

Twenty-two hours saw us through the main story with real investment, and the difficulty — this game pushes you — stretches that. But it's a story-driven survival horror, not an endless one; once the credits roll, the pull is a New Game+ run for the atmosphere rather than deep replay systems. It holds like a good horror campaign holds: memorably, not forever.

The verdict

Herd approved, both nostrils full of brine. If you want a genuinely atmospheric Lovecraftian survival horror and can forgive combat that never quite clicks, Frogwares has delivered their most confident game yet — a superior sequel and a real love letter to the mythos. Just don't come for the love story. Come for the things in the water.