REVIEW: ‘The Sinking City 2’ Thrives On Lovecraftian Horror, Yet Falters With Its Humanity

Lovecraftian horror has influenced horror video games for about as long as horror games have been made. The Sinking City 2, by Frogwares, brings the classic horror genre to the world of combat-focused survival horror. Keeping some of the series’ history, with detective mechanics, gritty and gruesome combat, and terrifying monsters beyond our understanding. What gets created is a great framework for a terrifying experience that falters because of its humanity and the human characters we deal with. 

Calvin Rafferty and his longtime girlfriend, Faye Bennett, chose to mess with something that should never have been touched. A ritual to reach the fabled Dreamlands goes haywire, leaving Faye in a coma and Calvin with amnesia. Maybe not so coincidentally, the waters of their home, Arkham, begin to rise.

Leading to confusion, chaos, and the otherworldly parasite, the Slither. The dead are rising, whispers are heard everywhere, and chaos reigns. Now we have to help Calvin survive the madness and save Faye from whatever incomprehensible being is using her for their plans.

The Sinking City 2 is a slow burn full of twists and turns.

For a story that involves the occult and the unknown, the story tends to stay grounded as a love story. Of one trying to save the other at all costs. It’s a slow burn full of twists and turns. But one thing stands in the way of the story and the game being great. And that’s Calvin and Faye. 

This couple starts off as cute, albeit naive, but they are annoying. They are most likely at fault for what happened to Arkham, and definitely the cause of what happened to them both. And they never reflect on this. They just keep fighting to save themselves and try to return to some semblance of what they were before all this tragedy. 

But the world built around these two is great to explore. It’s a story of a society that collapsed. Something unknown overtook them quickly, and those that remain are there to embrace the chaos.  The side characters you interact with add even more to Arkham. They add to the insanity and, when offering help, look for something beneficial to themselves in return. The notes left behind also try to build out this 1920s world even further.

Classic horror game locales are filled with Lovecraftian horrors.

Each note is a great read. Finding all of them paints a picture of this world as one of normalcy that has just around the corner, chaos ready to swallow it whole. Then there are the discoverable radios, each broadcasting a mysterious tale akin to Welcome to Night Vale. Arkham and meeting its denizens was way more of a treat than finding the answer to Calvin and Faye’s problems, even though where it leads them is great and horrific. 

The gameplay takes place across about four to five main areas. Most are like your classic horror game levels: A hotel, a hospital, and the dilapidated city. When dealing with Lovecraftian horrors, the game also includes a destroyed fish market to explore later. The McGuffin that leads Calvin to each area in the hunt for a cure for Faye isn’t nearly as interesting as learning what each new location holds.

Like the hospital, where a surgeon experimented on those seeking shelter from the flood. Or the hotel, where a beautiful woman used psychedelics and poison to turn an end-of-the-world bash into a bloodfest where the winner wins her. Calvin is at times disgusted by what he finds. Humans and human nature in these settings regularly trump the horrors that may have led them to the brink of destruction. Yet Calvin has, in a way, done much worse just for his and Faye’s selfish curiosity. 

The Sinking City 2 has some quite clever puzzles.

For exploring each location, puzzles are scattered around to guide you through the labyrinthine environments. You have to use some detective skills, discovering clues and linking those together to find each solution. There’s also an option to highlight key information in documents. So if you want more of a challenge, you can turn the highlighting off and read more into the documents to find what you need. 

There are some quite clever puzzles, too. Frogwares came up with some clever ideas that may even confuse those experienced at finding solutions hidden in ambiguity. And there are numerous optional puzzles, each of which grants more firepower or survivability. 

Connecting clues and finding every possible solution to every puzzle is more rewarding than you think. With some rewards, you are given a talent point. With enough, you can unlock specific talents that improve your overall gameplay, like more melee damage, better crafting, less damage taken, etc. These aren’t critical to getting to the end, but boy do they help give you an advantage.

Most of the game’s firearms feel satisfying to use.

In a similar vein, exploration is key to finding just enough ammo, weapons, and storage capacity to barely survive. The enemies are simply brutal and relentless. They’ll regularly get in cheap shots and keep you close to death unless you’re a master of dodging. Up until the final chapter, bag space was constantly a hot commodity. Items had to be traded out regularly in the safe room to just get more crafting reagents or a key item to progress. 

And if you don’t look everywhere, you’ll likely miss some firepower that will absolutely make a difference. Even with the pistol delivering a nice kick, it just isn’t enough sometimes against tougher foes. You ultimately are able to get your hands on a shotgun, SMG, a bolt-action rifle, and even a grenade launcher. Every weapon, except the grenade launcher, is satisfying to use. When finding some choice upgrades for each weapon, they can lead you to save some ammo, kill monsters faster, and retain some healing items for a bit longer. 

Some enemies, though, are just unfair to fight. Introduced in the fish market, you fight fish-like humanoid monsters that are armored and have much smaller weak spots than others. While most foes you face up to this point have a glowing red pustule that’s screaming “shoot here!”, these fish guys have some red gills on their chest that are extremely difficult to hit. And inconsistently, they reel from getting blasted and refuse to go down. They’re basically bullet sponges with nothing much giving away how to take them down. And they have one goal in mind: to make you use as many healing items as possible. 

Sinking City 2 emphasizes these struggles early on with a key message. You’re better off running than standing your ground. And personally, there was a lot of running around, trying to evade enemies in the later areas just to hoard all the ammo collected up to that point. 

The Sinking City 2 is difficult and pushes you to your limits.

Finally, the boss and boss scenarios are much easier than anything up to these encounters. The bosses aren’t all that challenging, and their arenas are full of crates that refill with ammunition and healing items. Any time you think you may die, you can quickly run around and grab enough stuff to get back to normal. Even cool or nail-biting scenarios are brought down by just how freely you’re given replacement items. But the worst sin is the commentary during some later fights.

Faye eventually follows Calvin around in a spirit form and talks so freaking much. But her chirps are so much worse in the boss fights that she’s present for. Non-stop chiming in for dodging an attack you just got hit by, pointing out when a critical environmental item needs to be messed with, and telling you almost constantly that you’re hurt. Especially during the final boss fight, there were times that the game just had to be muted for sanity’s sake. More screams were shouted at Faye to just shut up than there were times barely getting hit by an attack. 

There is so much good in Arkham. The worldbuilding is stellar. The environments are so much fun to explore. Every character besides Faye and Calvin is intriguing and adds a whole new layer to the mystery of human nature in unfathomable situations. Just Faye and Calvin suck as protagonists and bring the whole package down. 

The Sinking City 2 is difficult and pushes you to your limits. Yet every time it sings and embraces the incomprehensible Lovecraftian nightmares, Faye and Calvin’s story brings it all down. Yet even long-time fans of survival horror will find a challenge here. Get past the annoying and unlikeable protagonists, and you’ll have a great time. Be sure to mute the audio during the last two boss fights, or you’ll end up as insane as those who chose to stay in the chaos.

The Sinking City 2 is available now for purchase on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.