Is The Sinking City 2 Good?

What it does well

• Atmosphere. Drowned 1920s Arkham is oppressive in a way few horror games manage, and the game is confident enough to use darkness and silence rather than jump scares.
• Scarcity that means something. No ammunition shop, crates that need activator pens, and an inventory that forces choices.
• Investigation as progression. Turning the detective work into the talent economy makes it matter mechanically rather than decoratively.
• No filler. Ten hours with very little padding, in a year of eighty-hour games with plenty.

What it does badly

• PC performance. The 75 Metacritic score on PC against 84 on Xbox Series X is the clearest signal in the whole review picture.
• Combat is functional, not great. It serves the resource pressure rather than standing on its own.
• Darkness cuts both ways. Atmospheric, but several puzzles are harder than intended because you cannot read them — raise gamma.
• Everything is missable. No chapter select is a defensible design choice and a frustrating one.

Is it scary?

Yes, and more so than its profile suggests. Reviewers repeatedly said as much, and the reason is structural rather than theatrical: the game makes you low on ammunition in a dark building with something between you and the exit, then does not rescue you.

If you bounce off games where retreating is the correct answer, that is worth knowing. The difficulty settings are unusually flexible and can be changed mid-run, which takes most of the edge off if you want the story more than the tension.

Value at $49.99

Ten dollars under the current standard for a campaign of 8 to 12 hours, ~16 with a thorough sweep, and around 20 to reach 100% across two runs. That is a reasonable rate for a single-player horror game.

The honest counterpoint: if hours per dollar is your metric, plenty of games do better. What this one offers instead is density — see the length page.

Which platform to buy it on

1. Xbox Series X — the best-reviewed version at 84.
2. PS5 — 79, with DualSense support.
3. PC — 75, most flexible, most likely to need settings work, and note that FSR is not supported at launch.

It is not on Game Pass or PS Plus, so the purchase price is the price on every platform.

Who should skip it

Players who wanted the first game's open-world detective structure expanded rather than replaced, and players for whom sub-30-fps-adjacent PC performance would ruin a horror game. Both are legitimate, and neither is a criticism of what Frogwares built.

If you are unsure and on PC, the storefront refund windows are the practical substitute for the pre-launch demo — see the demo page.