The Sinking City 2 trades the original’s detective work for a short, slightly rough survival horror experience, but its atmosphere and scarce resources make it hard to put down.
Comparing The Sinking City 2 to Resident Evil is inevitable. It not only adopts the survival horror formula that Capcom perfected with its fourth installment and modern remakes, but also borrows many of the series’ favorite tools: limited inventory space, scarce ammunition, gradually unfolding environments, and monsters that are sometimes better avoided. The difference is that this trip to Arkham is considerably shorter. My playthrough took barely seven hours, which is precisely when that uncomfortable question emerges: can such a short game justify its price?
The answer depends on how much you value a focused experience. Frogwares developed the game in Ukraine during the war, an extraordinary circumstance that deserves to be acknowledged, although it should not shield the game from criticism. Judged simply on what it offers, The Sinking City 2 is a modest title that understands its limitations and remains entertaining enough for its short length to ultimately work in its favor.
A Rescue Straight Into the Heart of the Nightmare
The story follows Calvin Rafferty, an adventurer who arrives in a partially flooded Arkham to save his wife Faye, whose spirit has become trapped in another plane. His search pits him against reanimated corpses, aquatic creatures and cosmic horrors seemingly pulled straight from the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. References to his stories, creatures, and ancient gods are everywhere, although the game does not expect you to have read an entire Lovecraft library to understand its world.
Unlike the first game, investigation is no longer the main course. Optional cases primarily reward you with resources, upgrades, and additional perks, while correctly connecting clues on the investigation board grants talent points. The problem is that the game never clearly explained this last mechanic, so I only discovered it after completing more than half of the campaign. Fortunately, talents do not dramatically change the experience, but I would have appreciated Arkham handing me the instruction manual before trying to devour me.
Less Detective Work, More Shotgun
The arsenal is also rather small: there are five weapons and only two upgrades for each one. In a twenty-hour adventure, that lack of variety could become a problem; within such a compact campaign, it barely has time to become noticeable. The combat remains fresh until the end because The Sinking City 2 knows when to leave before it starts repeating itself.
The semi-open levels occasionally bring The Evil Within 2 to mind. Each area lets you explore buildings, unlock rooms, and venture away from the main path searching for ammunition or rewards. The inventory, meanwhile, is closer to the original Resident Evil than the famous attaché case from Resident Evil 4: space matters, and every bullet spent forces you to reconsider what might be waiting behind the next door.
Even on normal difficulty, the opening hours had me sweating. Ammunition is so scarce at first that I had to leave monsters roaming through several rooms and learn to pick my battles. The gunplay does not reinvent anything, but it feels satisfyingly punchy and follows the most important rule of survival horror: pulling the trigger should solve an immediate problem while creating another one for later.
Arkham Knows How to Get Inside Your Head
The atmosphere is unquestionably the game’s greatest triumph. Some character models and animations look like special guests from Garry’s Mod, but the environmental design, lighting, and sound compensate for much of that lack of polish. The creak of a door made me turn around more than once, convinced that something was approaching from behind.
Lovecraftian horror relies less on sudden scares than on planting doubts in the player’s mind, and The Sinking City 2 understands that distinction. It does not manipulate perception with the inventiveness of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, but it does turn every dark corridor into a small test of paranoia. The game does not need to place a monster behind every corner; it only needs to make you believe there might be one.
An Action Hero at the End of the World
Calvin brings unexpected levity to a story that might otherwise have drowned in its own solemnity. His personality combines the adventurous swagger of Indiana Jones with the action hero who always has a clever response ready. It is a cliché, and it occasionally clashes with the usual seriousness of Lovecraftian characters, but his charisma ultimately feels refreshing.
The story loses clarity during its final stretch. The ancient gods function as silent antagonists, leaving most of the exposition to Calvin and his wife. Both arrive at certain conclusions through magic and their connections to the other plane, although the player does not always receive enough information to follow the same reasoning. A mystery works best when it invites us to fill in the blanks; here, it occasionally feels as though entire pages are missing.
For achievement hunters, the campaign also provides a fairly approachable target. Getting everything requires more than one playthrough, but at seven hours, repeating the adventure hardly feels like a sentence handed down by Cthulhu.
Verdict: 7/10
The Sinking City 2 is a straightforward, effective, and surprisingly enjoyable survival horror game. Its limited arsenal, uneven animations, and increasingly muddled narrative prevent it from reaching greater heights, but it gets the most important elements right: atmosphere, exploration, resource management, and combat that maintains the tension. It will not replace Resident Evil, but it works perfectly as a patch for the addiction while we wait for the next dose.