The Sinking City 2 PC Review – Atmospheric and Intriguing Story

Having followed Frogwares’ work over the years and thoroughly enjoying their detective roots in titles like Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, I was keen to see how they would handle a pure horror pivot. I missed playing the first game so I went in fairly blind to The Sinking City 2. Released on August 18, 2026 across PC and consoles, the game delivers a tension-filled survival horror where there is plenty to appreciate in this drowned nightmare.

The story drops you into the tide-stained streets of 1920s Arkham, New England, which is a city buckling under a supernatural flood. A ritual gone wrong has trapped the soul of the woman you love within the Dreamlands, and malevolent forces have stolen her body. To rescue her, you must navigate a flooded urban ruin, tracing the source of the catastrophe while defying eldritch deities and monstrous threats creeping out of the depths.

Visually, the environmental detail in the waterlogged interiors, rotting decay, and eerie reflections across flooded streets creates an an eerie and mysterious place to explore. Running on my now aging PC rig, the performance held up surprisingly well throughout my playthrough delivering smooth framerates and clean visuals without forcing me to touch any graphics settings.

Wandering through the dark, water-damaged corridors of Arkham or the crypts of a graveyard builds an oppressive sense of anxiety, ensuring you never feel truly safe as you peek around every corner. You might see a monster scurry across the path in front of you, but you are never sure if it was for effect or if that monster is slowly hunting you. Seeing a red can of fuel or bear traps on the floor means at some point you will be facing one or many enemies. I loved how sometimes you come across a stoppage or a puzzle but can’t solve it yet, and it’s marked on your map to return as more clues are discovered.

Environmental awareness becomes essential for survival. The game actively rewards players who scan rooms for explosive barrels and hazard traps before opening fire. Baiting two or three creatures into a tight bottleneck and setting off an environmental explosion lets you eliminate multiple threats at once, conserving critical supplies and delivering a hugely satisfying payoff when executed under pressure.

Resource scarcity is severe throughout the campaign, forcing a cautious approach to every room and every lootable box you come across. Given ammunition is in terribly short supply, shooting your way out of trouble simply isn’t an option. While you can craft ammo, the resources required are spread thin. Monsters have a blob of red that if you shoot will do more damage, but given ammo scarcity you cannot afford to miss.

Relying on melee attacks becomes a necessity to save your precious rounds for inescapable encounters, even when going toe-to-toe with eldritch abominations carries heavy risk. However, melee encounters can feel clunky and stiff, which becomes super frustrating when you are forced into close quarters in narrow hallways. Bear with it and keep spare parts in safe rooms to craft ammo and meds. Additionally, while the initial creature designs are skin-crawling, a relatively limited pool of enemy types means that mid-game encounters can start to feel repetitive once you have learned their basic attack patterns.

The audio production in The Sinking City 2 is absolute peak and carries much of the game’s dread. Throwing on a good pair of headphones completely transforms the experience, surrounding you with deeply unsettling positional audio. Creaking floorboards, distant sloshing in flooded rooms, and subtle, inhuman skittering inside the walls keep you in a constant state of alert.

The game excels at establishing a suffocating Lovecraftian atmosphere. The combination of stellar directional audio, sharp Unreal Engine 5 visual details, and solid optimisation on older hardware creates an unnerving environment to explore. Combat mechanics feel appropriately high-stakes thanks to strict inventory limitations, and using environmental traps to outsmart group encounters adds an engaging tactical layer to room traversal.

Overall, The Sinking City 2 is dripping with horror atmosphere in a Lovecraftian world where every bullet counts and the soundscape does the heavy lifting. There is some frustration with clunky melee encounters but look out for escape routes or explosive items. If you like the odd jump scare and sinking into an intriguing story, be sure to play in the dark with headphones on.

This review utilised a Steam key provided by the developers and The Sinking City 2 is out now on Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox and PlayStation.

#roundtablecoop