The Sinking City Remastered vs The Sinking City 2

Two different games

Anyone framing this as an upgrade path has it wrong. The sequel is not a better version of the first game; it is a different design that reuses the world.

Which to play

Play the sequel if you want horror, tension and a focused ten hours. It is the better-reviewed game and it needs nothing from you first — confirmed here.

Play the remaster if what appeals is investigating: interviewing witnesses, cross-referencing archives, and piecing a case together across a whole city. The sequel keeps that instinct alive in the Investigation Space, but at a fraction of the scale.

What a remaster is and is not

Check the listingRemaster scope varies. Rather than describe specific technical changes we have not verified, the honest advice is to read the store page for the version you are considering — it will state what was rebuilt.

What is certain is that it remains the 2019 game in design terms: same structure, same city, same protagonist.

Availability

The first game and its remaster reach further back than the sequel does: the original ran on last-generation consoles, which is why it is the answer for anyone still on PS4 or Xbox One. The sequel is current-generation and PC only.

Storefront links for the sequel are in the Official Links block at the foot of every page here.

If you play both

Play the sequel first, then the remaster if you want more of the world. That order works because the sequel demands no context, while the first game's sprawl is easier to enjoy once you already like the setting.

Playing them in release order is also fine. What does not work is treating the first game as required reading — it is not, and its length would put many players off the sequel entirely.

Price and value

The sequel launched at $49.99, which is $10 under the current full-price standard, and it goes on sale at the studio's own discretion because Frogwares self-publishes. The first game and its remaster are older and correspondingly cheaper.

If budget is the deciding factor rather than genre, the remaster is the lower-cost entry to the setting — but it is a much longer game, so it costs more of your time.

What carries over mechanically

Nothing. No save transfer, no shared progression, no returning systems beyond the studio's general approach to evidence and deduction. Terminology differs too — the sequel's Investigation Space is its own system rather than a renamed version of the original's mind palace.

That matters when reading guides: advice written for the first game does not apply here, and a handful of sites have mixed the two games' terminology together.