The Sinking City 2 Review
Release Date: 18/08/2026
Platforms: PS5, XBOX & PC
Platform Played On: PS5 Pro
Hours Played: 40
Score: 8/10
The Sinking City 2 is the second game in the series, but rather than building on what came before, it heads in a completely different direction. Where the first game was an investigative mystery, this one is a full-blown survival horror, and honestly, for a studio taking its first real crack at the genre, it is anything but a rough attempt.
You are dropped into a Lovecraftian world where things have gone very wrong and the city of Arkham is slowly drowning. You play as Calvin, a man willing to do whatever it takes to get back his loved one, Faye, who has been taken by the horrors of this , sunken city.
Survival horror has a handful of names that stand out for good reason, and while it is a crowded space, every so often something comes along that earns a place among them. The Sinking City 2 surprised me, and in the best way. It is, in just about every sense, a very good survival horror game that nails almost everything the genre is built on.
Each chapter plays out like a small open world for you to explore. Some send you out across the drowned city in your boat, weaving between flooded streets and doubling back to old locations in classic survival horror fashion as you turn up the key items needed to crack open the puzzle waiting on the other side of the map. Others drop you into enormous, more traditional layouts like a sprawling hospital or a fish market, and when I say enormous, I mean some of the biggest "dungeons" the genre has to offer. That size never becomes a problem, though. They are not overly complex, and while you will get that familiar wave of being overwhelmed the moment you realise you need ten different keys and items to reach certain rooms, the game does a great job of always nudging you in the right direction. The larger maps genuinely start to feel like large-scale escape rooms, and there is real satisfaction in watching the map fill in completely blue once you have picked it clean.
If I have one wish for those spaces, it is that they had gone a little wilder with the ideas behind them. A massive hospital with some tasteful Lovecraftian touches is great, and the second big location does push into something more unique, but for a game steeped in this kind of cosmic horror, I think there was room to get stranger. It is not a real complaint, especially for a first attempt, and if anything it just leaves me hoping they lean into it harder next time.
Progression itself is very Resident Evil in spirit: find the right item to open the right door, poke around side areas for collectibles, and earn key items by solving puzzles. None of that structure reinvents the wheel, but the puzzles deserve a special mention. They are never brutally difficult, though they do tighten up nicely toward the end, and I enjoyed them a good deal more than those in most recent major survival horror releases. There is a healthy amount of them too, ranging from genuinely interesting story-related ones to some wonderfully odd secondary puzzles that have you piecing clues together from in-game documents, often rewarding you with trophies and useful upgrades along the way.
The one real gameplay wrinkle that sets it apart from its peers is a talent tree. It never reshapes the game in a dramatic way, dealing mostly in perks like extra damage under certain conditions or faster reloads, but it slots into the genre cleanly and feels like a thoughtful addition rather than a bolted-on gimmick. As a completionist, I will note that you upgrade it by tracking down a specific collectible rather than by levelling up, and fully maxing the tree means playing through the game two or more times, which can drag a little. That said, the game deserves real credit for cutting out most of the tedious multi-playthrough, speedrun and challenge trophies that so often weigh this genre down. There is an Extras menu with its own point store for unlocking skins and a few talents, but it never pushes you toward it too hard, which is a nice touch.
Combat is solid if unremarkable. The gunplay feels good, and you get your usual spread of shotgun, rifle and grenade launcher, but nothing here is going to redefine how you approach a fight. The enemies follow a similar pattern. Plenty of them are your standard "zombies," yet the Lovecraftian setting does allow for a few more interesting designs, including some frustrating types that will happily chase you around. It is serviceable rather than standout, and there is clearly space to get more creative, but it is worth saying that at least not every boss here boils down to a blob with a few glowing eyes to shoot.
On the visual side, while it is not operating at the level of something like the RE Engine, the game still looks very solid. The weather effects in particular are worth calling out, with heavy rainstorms battering the sides of buildings looking especially good.
There is also a New Game Plus mode, which adds its own unique collectibles to hunt down, though beyond that not a great deal changes. The puzzles stay the same regardless of difficulty, which feels like a missed opportunity to shake things up, particularly given you will be playing through at least twice if you are chasing every trophy or achievement.
At the end of the day, though, this is a genuinely great survival horror, and I would love to see the team keep pushing down this path. If this is their first crack at the genre, there may well be a new name worth watching in the space. It might not carry the deep lore, story and charismatic characters that some of its rivals have built up over the years, but if you love games like Resident Evil, you are going to have a great time with this one.
