Venture through the flooded streets of Arkham in search of a way to restore your lost love, while dealing with eldritch horrors and inventory-based puzzles in this survival horror game.
My preview of The Sinking City 2 earlier this year left me eager to see how the full game would play out, so I was pleased to have a chance to play it for review. It is a sequel to 2019’s open-world detective game The Sinking City, but it features a standalone story and shifts into the survival horror genre. You play as Calvin, an occult adventurer searching for a way to save the woman he loves, Faye. Her body lies comatose with her mind trapped elsewhere, and so he ventures into the flooded streets of Arkham to find the answers he needs.
Arkham is a flooded, abandoned city left in ruins and infested by the Slither. These worm-like creatures puppeteer corpses to attack you, but they’re far from the only enemies you’ll face. Many more monstrosities haunt your steps as you proceed through the game, as well, enough to keep me tense and on my toes. There are separate difficulty options for action and puzzle-solving, as well as individual settings you can adjust, such as aim assist. Combat generally comes down to shooting enemies’ weak spots. As you explore, you’ll find ammo, healing items, and crafting supplies, and the game does a good job of making the resource management feel balanced. Many times, it’s possible and even beneficial to avoid enemies instead of fighting.
Every now and then, however, the game forces you into a fight against waves of enemies. This aspect was the biggest negative for me. Such fights feel a little too geared toward action for my tastes when it comes to survival horror, and while I assumed the first one was a one-time thing in lieu of a boss fight, I eventually learned there were more. There was no worse feeling than realizing I was once again trapped in a room with waves of enemies to fight. During these fights as well as boss fights, you have access to special replenishing item containers so you don’t run out of ammo or healing items. That’s a mercy, but it also makes it feel even more action-oriented. Fortunately, there are only a handful of these sequences in the game.
Most gameplay is spent exploring the flooded city and related locations. In proper survival horror style, these areas have a variety of keys to find and puzzles to solve so you can move forward and gradually open up the entire area. Your map shows whether you’ve found all items in a room or not, a nice touch that I always appreciate. Safe rooms can be found from time to time, precious havens where you can store items, unlock passive perks known as talents, and save your game. The game auto-saves at key points as well, but it’s always nice to have a path back to the nearest safe room.
Most of the required puzzles are inventory-based, requiring you to explore one area to find the item needed to unlock the next. This is the strongest part of The Sinking City 2. I loved finding a new key and seeing which previously inaccessible areas I could now access. Some puzzles also include riddles, especially the optional ones. There are several optional puzzles throughout the game, with rewards to be found for doing them. For example, a series of cryptic clues might give you the combination to a safe that contains an upgrade for one of your weapons. Each clue you collect, meanwhile, is placed on your Investigation Space, where you can link them together. Correctly linking a group of clues rewards you with dream essence, which you use to unlock talents, so it’s well worth doing. It’s fairly easy to figure out which clues are meant to be linked together, although in one instance I thought all the clues were part of one big puzzle and didn’t realize until later that I had to split them into groups to get my dream essence.
In addition to clues, you can also find documents that provide additional lore, as well as radio broadcasts that tell stories, with plenty of H.P. Lovecraft references. I loved finding these, so it was disappointing when I realized I couldn’t backtrack to areas from a previous chapter to look for what I missed. I hoped for more interconnectivity between locations, rather than just within each separate location, so that felt like a missed opportunity. However, the story is solid and did a good job of getting me invested in Calvin’s goal. I wanted things to work out for him and Faye, and I enjoyed following their story through to the end. The Sinking City 2 might not have been perfect, but it was a fun survival horror experience and a good foray into the genre.
Good
The Final Word
The Sinking City 2 is a strong move into the survival horror genre for Frogwares. Although I wish it were possible to backtrack to earlier areas and found the wave battles to be too action-focused compared to the rest, I enjoyed my perilous journey through Arkham.
