It doesn't matter if we're talking about movies or games, sequels tend to follow one simple rule: bigger is better. More content, more characters, more explosions, more everything. Because if it isn't twice as big as the original, what's even the point?

But in an interesting little twist, The Sinking City 2 has decided to do the complete opposite. It's smaller, shorter, and far more linear than its predecessor... yet also massively better. Because while the original tried to be an open-world game, a detective game and a survival-horror all at the same time, the sequel has just slammed its chips on the table and gone all in on survival-horror - and in a direction I, honestly, never could've expected.

Video version of this review (~20 minutes)

Familiar Territory

And so from the moment I started playing, I was hit with this weird sense of déjà-vu. The way my character moved. The way the zombies stumbled around. The limited inventory and even more limited ammo. It all felt so incredibly familiar... but I just couldn't quite place it.

That was until I reached the first major area, picked up the map, and suddenly had a eureka moment. This isn't a sequel to The Sinking City 1. This is a sequel to Resident Evil!

And no, that's not a joke, a gag or a funny bit I'm doing. I'm actually serious. You've got heavily interconnected areas, limited resources, doors locked by the most absurd keys you've ever seen, a color-coded map telling you where the loot is... and yes, even a Mr. X style monster that occasionally shows up to give you a big hug.

But honestly? That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're going to copy anyone, you might as well borrow from the best. But... does that mean The Sinking City 2 is just as good as Resident Evil?

Well... yes and no. There are definitely some problems, and we'll go to those in a bit. But for what is essentially Frogwares' first serious attempt at making a full-blown survival-horror game, The Sinking City 2 does a surprising amount of things right.

Fighting zombies in a flooded library hits juuuuust right

Tension Rising

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the atmosphere. The original could get a bit unnerving when you were walking through its desolate, devastated streets, but it was never really that intense. The sequel, however, kept me on edge for most of the game. Because let me tell you, skulking through a fish market at night, surrounded by corpses and the endless slithering of something that may or may not come to nibble on your nose, is just... awful. But a good kind of awful.

And the game is like this all the way through. Whether you're stumbling through a misty cemetery infested with the most annoying enemies known to mankind, or exploring a hospital where the healthcare is to die for, the game maintains a consistent oppressive atmosphere.

Lovecraftian Story #404

Because of this, I found myself wanting to poke around and explore, which gave me plenty of time to get aquianted with the main character Calvin - an Indiana Jones style adventurer and *cough* thief... that's admittedly a bit dweebier than you might expect from that description.

His partner Faye has fallen under some... let's say hard times, and so you spend most of the game trying to get her out of trouble. And honestly, The Sinking City 2 does a pretty good job of making you care about that. Because right after the intro cutscene, I knew exactly why someone would want to go out and fistfight zombies for her.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't spend a lot of time building up that relationship... or much of the story at all. Most of it is fairly standard Lovecraft stuff: ancient horrors, mysterious cults, a gateway to another world, and waaaaay too many tentacles. It's only at the very end that things get spicier, but even then the game is afraid to leave familiar waters.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but you can definitely feel that The Sinking City 2 has decided to focus on the action first and the story a distant second. Which might come as a bit of a shock if you're jumping in straight from the original game.

Say hi to Mr. Squiddles

Wormbies

But for me, the sacrifice was worth it, because The Sinking City 2 absolutely nails the fighting against zombies in a way that I've only really seen Resident Evil do. Now mind you, they're not technically zombies. They're actually worm puppets, but when you see a corpse lurch back to life and immediately start clawing at your throat, the distinction doesn't seem all that important.

As you'd expect from wormbies, they are incredibly annoying to bring down. And again, I mean that in the best way possible. You can't just shoot them in the head and hope they go away. Some of these bastards don't even have a brain to begin with. Instead you have to aim for the disgusting tumors that randomly appear across their bodies.

Easy enough to say, but when these things start swaying and jerking around like deranged marionettes, you'll end up wasting a lot of ammo simply repainting the walls. And that's not something you can afford to do, because even on normal difficulty, the game puts the squeeze on you. I never found myself actually out of ammo, but aside from the very end of the game, I also never had the 'I can spray the tommygun in blind panic' kind of supplies either.

And that's exactly what I love about survival-horror games. I get a - honestly worrying - amount of enjoyment from the game throwing me into impossible scenarios where I have to make snap decisions with devastating consequences. Do I stay and fight? Waste half my ammo? Or do I bravely advance in the opposite direction while screaming incoherently?

The last option is generally the easiest... but running away doesn't actually solve your problems. Those zombies will still be there when you come back, patiently waiting to give you a big ol' worm hug. So there's never a clean or easy answer, and that's exactly what keeps the tension so high.

The tommygun is effective... but ammo is scarce

I Hope You Like Keys

And speaking of backtracking, that's another thing The Sinking City 2 has copied off Resident Evil's homework. All of the main areas are these massive, sprawling behemoths with dozens of interconnected rooms that are often locked with ridiculous obstacles. Why yes, let's design a door that only opens if you sing a sea shanty! Or how about a door with facial recognition software... by which I mean you need to use someone's skinned face to unlock it.

Because of this you're constantly moving up, down, left and right - opening new pathways and discovering even more reasons to criss-cross the map. And much like Resident Evil, the game loves teasing you with goodies that are always juuuuuust out of reach. You'll spot an inventory upgrade, but first you'll need to fiddle with some weird contraption to open the path to it. And it's rarely as simple as going from A to B, because things often go horribly wrong and force you to improvise.

But that's also what makes the whole thing work. Every time you run through one of these playgrounds of horror you become a little more familiar with it. You learn which corridors are safe, how everything connects, and where you can skulk away to if things go pear-shaped.

So by the end, even when the danger has been ramped up, you kind of start feeling like you own the place. A bunch of zombies and Mr. X are blocking your path? Pfft, no problem. Just cut through the lobby, head downstairs, and take the long way around. It's just another day at the office.

Not even close

Investigating Puzzles

And it's not just about raiding emergency supplies for literal boxes of grenades. The Sinking City 2's world is full of memos, notepads and carefully curated journals written by madmen moments before their death. They offer some nifty bits of lore, but more importantly, they often contain the clues you need to solve puzzles. And I'm both surprised and delighted to say the puzzles are actually fun.

I kept mine on normal difficulty, so I can't tell you what the galaxy-brain versions are like, but the ones I had to deal with were balanced juuuuuust right. Hard enough that I had to whip out a pen & paper to try to wrangle all the symbolism, but never so obtuse that I had to spend 10 minutes randomly shuffling objects around while questioning if I'm even sentient. And for a game that's primarily focused on action, that's pretty much exactly how I want things to go.

But, like any occult ritual, this newfound excellence does come at a cost. Because one of the things that has largely disappeared in the transition from The Sinking City 1 to 2 is the investigative side of the game. In the original you had to follow clues, research information in an actual library, and then head out into the open world to track down your target.

Most of that is now gone. Sure, you still have to link notes together to 'solve a case', but that's mostly a token gesture - a little reminder that this is still technically a sequel to The Sinking City.

The puzzles are simple to understand, but can be quite tricky regardless

A Touch of Horror

And that's honestly a real shame, because The Sinking City 2's world is genuinely fun to explore. Especially during those rare few moments where you get to actually dive into the weird and occult side of the world.

For example, early on there's a strange cult you can investigate for no other reason than because you want to. And that little detour comes with its own puzzles, challenges, lore, and even a unique boss fight that had me going 'nope, nope, nope, bad idea' the whole way through. It's a delectable yet optional treat, and exactly the kind of thing I wish there was more of.

Because while I'm perfectly happy with The Sinking City 2 focusing more heavily on survival-horror, it would've been nice to see a few moments like that - moments where you get to feel like some sort of paranormal detective. Even if adding it would've made the game's otherwise mostly good pacing a little messier.

Now you might be wondering, why the 'mostly'? Well, that's because the game overuses one trope to the point where it becomes so predictable it stops working - doing literally anything triggers an attack. Pull a lever? The corpses around you will get up. Collect a piece of the triforce? You betcha, here's a wave of zombies. Backtrack after singing to a door? Why don't you celebrate by dancing with a deep one!

And don't get me wrong, I actually like this as a concept. It keeps you on your toes, especially since random suspicious corpses are bloody everywhere. But when you do the same trick over and over again, it just stops being a surprise. By the end, I would walk into a room and immediately start thinking "okay, that guy's getting up, that one's going to try to scare me, and I'll probably need to run over there".

And that's not the mindset you want to have in a horror game. You want the occasional 'AKGHAKLGIHEKBGAEG' moment when something catches you completely off guard. It's just more fun that way.

That said, The Sinking City 2 doesn't actually rely on jumpscares for its horror. It's all about the atmosphere. The slow, creeping dread where you're never sure what's around the next corner - the kind of tension that pushes your imagination into overdrive and makes you invent monsters far worse than anything you'd actually face.

When in doubt, leg it!

Style and Substance

But even when the game's scares became a little predictable, I still enjoyed just how creative The Sinking City 2 got with its environments. As soon as I'd start getting a bit too familiar with an area, the game would whisk me away to somewhere completely different. And so, all throughout my ~14 hour playthrough, there was always something new to look at.

And while I never had a chance to crank the visuals to max - mostly because new GPUs now cost as much as an actual horse - the game was still gorgeous. And all of this while being shockingly well polished. In my 14 hours with the game, I ran into one - singular - bug!

The Sinking City 2 just has a really atmospheric style that makes everything from boating across the ruins of Arkham to exploring a haunted hospital feel appropriately grim... while still having enough color to not make it get depressing or boring.

Which, I must admit, was something I was genuinely worried about when I first saw the weapons. The main arsenal might as well be government-issued, standard FPS stock: a pistol, a shotgun, a tommygun and a rifle. Nothing particularly exciting to latch onto. But the more I played, the more I came to appreciate how they fit into the game's combat - especially the humble pistol.

It might not be able to turn enemies bright red like the shotgun, but it's precise, its ammo is cheap to craft, and you can just go 'pop, pop, pop' to smash weak point after weak point. Because of this I ended up relying on it for most of the game, and in hindsight, that was probably the right call because it pairs so damn well with the melee combat.

That said, I do also love the blunt simplicity of the shotgun

Sweep the Leg

And yes, The Sinking City 2 actually has melee combat that consists of more than just knifing enemies that are on the floor. It's not something you want to rely on all the time, because failure usually means you get a sloppy worm kiss - but successfully pulling off a one-two punch is absurdly satisfying.

My only real complaint is that there are enemies whose entire purpose in life is to be annoying - not difficult - but that's not too big of a problem when you can shoot out their knee so they fall face-first, and then stomp the ever-loving shit out of them like you're playing Dead Space. It doesn't matter if it's a regular zombie or one of the weird flower-headed freaks - the mighty boot puts in the work!

And that applies to the combat as a whole. The guns, melee attacks and environmental hazards like explosive barrels - you know, that common thing we all have in our house - all work really well together. You're constantly encouraged to experiment and improvise because of your limited resources, which means taking risks. But with risks comes failure, and with failure even tighter resources, so you then have to get even more tricksy to survive. And I realllllly love that kind of stuff.

A Lack of Character

Unfortunately, all this cool stuff does lead me to one of my biggest problems with The Sinking City 2 - the lack of a city, or rather its characters.

The original The Sinking City is memorable largely because of its cast of absolutely wild characters you could meet as they went about their day-to-day in the middle of the apocalypse.

The Sinking City 2 also does that... just on a microscopic scale. There's some truly fascinating people you can meet, like this one lunatic that tore out his eyeballs so he could replace them with worms. He's exactly what I wanted to see, but he's there for such a short time that you don't really get to roll around in all that wonderful Lovecraftian weirdness. Your occasional companion aside, you basically get one brief conversation per chapter.

And that's a dang shame, because the voice acting ranges from good to great. Especially when it comes to the main cast, because I absolutely love it whenever Faye is on screen. Like I said before, it only took me a few minutes to understand why Calvin would be willing to fistfight fish on her behalf.

Yep...

Is The Sinking City 2 Worth Playing?

But is that enough to completely ruin The Sinking City 2 for me? Not even close.

Yeah, I miss some of the things that made the original special. I would've loved some actual investigations and a few more unhinged characters to gawk at. But, I also recognize that trying to do all of that made the original spread itself so thin that it turned out practically transparent.

So The Sinking City 2 going all-in on one thing - being a good survival-horror game - was the correct choice. The combat is tense, the exploration rewarding, the puzzles surprisingly fun, and the atmosphere is so thick you'll find yourself jumping at shadows.

Even when the game became occasionally predictable, I was never bored. In fact, I ploughed through the entire thing in three days because I was just having a blast. It might not be the sequel I ever expected to see, but now that I've gotten a taste of this new direction, I'd really like some more.

So if you're a fan of Resident Evil, survival-horror, or just the idea of slapping zombies around in a flooded library - definitely give The Sinking City 2 a try.

As for me, I'll be keeping a close eye on what Frogwares does next. Because if their next game can somehow combine the best elements from The Sinking City 1 and 2 into a cohesive experience, I think they could have something truly special on their hands.

[Note]: I've also made a Beginner's Guide going over everything I wish I knew before I first started. So if you want to give yourself a leg up, I welcome you to check it out. Thanks!