The Sinking City 2 Review Scores and Verdict

What the scores say

A nine-point spread across platforms on the same game is a technical story rather than a critical one — the outlets involved, from IGN to the specialist horror press, largely agreed on the design. The full breakdown is on the scores page.

What critics agreed on

• The critic consensus is that the pivot works. Dropping the first game's open world for five authored districts made a tighter, scarier game.
• Atmosphere is the standout. Drowned 1920s Arkham is genuinely oppressive, and the game is unusually confident about darkness and silence.
• It is short. Eight to twelve hours, which most reviewers treated as a feature given the $49.99 price.
• PC performance is uneven. The most consistent criticism, and visible in the platform score gap.

What it costs and what you get

$49.99 for the Standard Edition — ten dollars under the current full-price standard — for a five-chapter campaign, an investigation system that doubles as progression, 23 trophies or achievements, and a New Game Plus mode required for 100%.

The Premium Edition at $59.99 is the only tier that adds gameplay: the two-hour Holloway Manor mission and the Bucking Bronco.

Who it is for

Buy it if you want a tight, atmospheric survival horror with real resource pressure and a Lovecraftian setting handled with more care than usual; if you value density over length; or if you liked the first game's world but not its structure.

Skip it if you wanted more open-world detective work — this is a different genre now — or if a ten-hour campaign at $49.99 is not the value proposition you look for. The longer argument is on the verdict page.

Do you need the first game?

No. It is a standalone story with a new protagonist, Calvin Rafferty, and a new case. The 2019 original adds tonal context for Arkham but nothing you need to follow events — the full answer.

If you are choosing between the sequel and the remastered original, that comparison is on its own page.

What the review picture misses

Two things worth adding to any score. First, this game's difficulty is unusually adjustable — four modes, switchable at any time — which means the resource pressure reviewers describe is something you can dial to taste. Second, the completion structure is a genuine two-run design: full completion needs New Game Plus, and reviews written against a single playthrough rarely account for that.

Neither changes whether the game is good. Both change what "ten hours" means as a purchase decision.

A note for non-English searches

Search terms for this vary by language and the differences trip people up. In German, a review is a Test — so "the sinking city 2 test" is people looking for reviews, not for a demo or a beta. In Italian it is a recensione, and in Spanish an analisis (análisis). All three are asking the same question this section answers.

The wiki is in English today. If you searched in another language and landed here, the scores in the table above are the same numbers those articles are quoting.

Context worth knowing

Frogwares is an independent Ukrainian studio, and it built this game through wartime disruption — power cuts, relocations, and a Kickstarter campaign launched in March 2025 to help fund it. The studio self-publishes and priced the game deliberately below the market.

None of that is a reason to rate a game higher. It is context for why a $49.99 price and a focused ten-hour campaign look like considered decisions rather than compromises.