The Sinking City 2 is survival horror because the detective game was the problem. The war is part of the product.

I have not finished The Sinking City 2. Frogwares shipped it August 18, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Movies Games and Tech put a 9 on the board today, Saturday, August 29. DualShockers already called it a triumph. IGN called it Resident Evil in a fedora. PC Gamer called it an incremental improvement that left the flooded streets too soon. The Guardian called it Ukrainian cosmic horror, come hell or high water. That is the public record. I am not going to invent a save file so I can sound like I stomped every Slither. I am going to review the argument the sequel is making, because the argument is the product.

The argument is not subtle, and Frogwares has been saying it out loud since the Xbox Partner Preview in March 2024. The first Sinking City was a detective game with horror around the edges. The sequel is survival horror with detective work as an optional bonus. Publishing director Sergiy Oganesyan told PC Gamer they needed to start taking bolder moves because the industry was changing and they wanted to secure the studio's future. Executive producer Denys Chebotarov said investigation should be beneficial for people who want it, not a gate. Game director Alexander Gresko, writing on Xbox Wire the day the game unlocked, put the old object in one sentence: an open world detective adventure with horror around the edges. The new object puts exploration, pacing, and combat at the center. That is not a marketing pivot that got lucky. That is a studio reading its own reviews.

I played the 2019 game. I will not invent an hour count, and I will not pretend a 2026 save file on my machine is complete. What I remember from Oakmont is the honest version of an ambitious mess. Frogwares, the Ukrainian house that spent two decades making Sherlock Holmes games, built a flooded open world, a mind palace, a motorboat, and a combat system that kept getting in the way. The game got mixed-to-favorable notices, a legal fight with Nacon that froze the original release, and a remaster once the fight ended. Charles Reed's story closed on purpose. Gresko said there is no canonical ending because that game was always about your moral choices. You do not need it to follow Calvin Rafferty and Faye Bennett. New city. New cast. New religion.

The religion is Resident Evil, and almost every critic on the desk is willing to say that without pretending it is an insult. Len Hafer at IGN needed fifteen minutes to land on Resident Evil in a fedora, then spent the rest of the review treating the comparison as a compliment. Jody Macgregor at PC Gamer called it Resident Evil: Roaring '20s Revelations and said we no longer have to wait for Capcom to make it. DualShockers' closest comps were the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake and the first Dead Space. TheSixthAxis said the tighter, more linear game will appeal to fans of Resident Evil and the like, and that the decision might still be controversial because it spends the unique character of the original. Shacknews wanted more spark. Movies Games and Tech, filing today from a PS5 review code, said Frogwares took the original's critiques to heart and revamped the gameplay entirely: instead of a detective game with clunky combat, a survival horror with smooth combat. I am not adopting anyone's 9. I am adopting the split. The detective game was the problem. Survival horror is the honest product.

The detective game was the problem. Survival horror is the honest product.

The object itself is straightforward, which is the point. Standard is $49.99 on Steam. Deluxe is $54.99. Premium is $59.99 and bought you 24-hour early access plus The Holloway Manor, a side mission Steam still sells separately for $12.99. Unreal Engine 5. Quality mode at 30 frames, performance at 60, per Frogwares' own console brief. Wikipedia, citing Gematsu, has a Switch 2 version scheduled for 2027. Steam, as of this desk's pull, sits at Very Positive: 83 percent of 1,095 user reviews. Metacritic's live page is 79 out of 100 from 40 critics, generally favorable, with a user score of 8.1 from 124 ratings. OpenCritic's live page is a top critic average of 80, 77 percent of critics recommending, 87 reviews in the stack. I am not inventing a Rotten Tomatoes number I do not have. Seventy-nine with a forty-critic sample is a weather report. The spread is the argument: DualShockers at 9, Movies Games and Tech at 9, PlayStation Universe at 8.5, IGN at 8, TheSixthAxis at 8, Hobby Consolas at 82, Hardcore Gamer at 4 out of 5, Shacknews at 7, PC Gamer at 70. That is a room that likes the rebuild and is arguing about how much of Oakmont they were willing to bury.

Calvin Rafferty is the new body. Steam and the Xbox store copy call him an occult adventurer in 1920s Arkham. A ritual goes wrong. Faye Bennett's soul is trapped in the Dreamlands. Malevolent forces steal her body. The city is already flooding. Residents are leaving on overcrowded boats. Worms arrived with the water. The official bestiary names them: the Slither animate the dead, Deep Ones surge from dark water, Shadows bend space. Gresko's Xbox Wire piece names locations without needing a walkthrough: the streets of Arkham, Akeley Memorial Hospital, the Fish Market. You boat, then you walk rooms. Investigation still exists. It does not stop the story if you skip it. Optional cases unlock safer routes, supplies, and upgrades. That is the Sherlock muscle kept as a side dish. Hafer wanted it harder. Macgregor said Cal dresses like a detective and does not do any actual detecting. Movies Games and Tech treated the leftover clue board as a lighter, optional layer and did not miss the old gate. Three weather reports. Same object.

Combat is the repair job everyone can see. The original's clunky fights were the complaint that would not die. The sequel gives Calvin a dodge, a stomp, a pistol, later guns, and enemies with pus growths you shoot if you want to save bullets. Resources are scarce on purpose. Difficulty splits four ways, from Sweet Dreams to Sleep Demon, with puzzle difficulty on its own slider, Breezy or Brainy. The easiest combat setting can turn on immortality. Aim assist is a scale. That is a studio that knows who is coming from Sherlock and who is coming from Resident Evil 2. Hafer said Calvin is not as vulnerable as Resident Evil Requiem's Grace and is not Leon S. Kennedy either. Movies Games and Tech said fight or flight is a real choice in most encounters. Shacknews still found the combat a little clunky and one boss an exercise in aggravation. Those can sit together. Smooth relative to 2019 is not the same as inventing a new dance.

The other repair is the map. Oakmont was too much toast and not enough butter, Macgregor's line, and the sequel bins the open world for constrained locations that behave like puzzle boxes. Gresko said leaving the open world meant they could put something in every room worth finding: a story, a secret, or a monster. The cost, which PC Gamer and a stack of user notes are already logging, is that you do not go back. Miss a relief crate and you may not see that district again. The campaign wraps in around 10 to 15 hours, a window Movies Games and Tech, PC Gamer, and DualShockers all orbit without me needing to invent a clock. Macgregor wanted more of the flooded streets and more of the Dreamlands and got a finale that made him ask, is this it? I have not seen the finale. I am not going to spoil one. I am going to put the runtime on the cart, because a survival horror that executes the genre well in a weekend is still a weekend.

Shipping a game from a studio in a war is not a bonus feature. It is part of the product.

The war is not a blurb. It is in the ROM. DualShockers' review, which is the most specific production brief on the desk, says the game was created in 43 months, and that in that window Frogwares staff were conscripted, forced to move, had homes destroyed, were injured, and worked through power, internet, and heating outages. Gresko's unlock-day letter on Xbox Wire said making a game is hard enough under normal circumstances, and doing it with a team in Ukraine while a war continues around them brought challenges they could never have planned for. Wikipedia quotes CEO Wael Amr from the Kickstarter: power cuts as electrical infrastructure was targeted for months, team members relocating at short notice, a financial safety net they needed because this game is vastly bigger and more complex. The Guardian's Nic Rueben, filing August 17, is the piece that refuses to treat that as a press note. An intro screen, he writes, reads: as of writing, 85,183 air raid sirens registered across our cities. Work continued, and so did life. Some of the sirens in Arkham, DualShockers says, are recordings of the real ones. Rueben found X-rays in a hospital lab that are the stories of injuries sustained by soldiers fighting for Frogwares' native Ukraine. Fingers amputated after severe burns. Limbs lost in mines. Toes torn off by shell fire. Then he quotes Bukowski: if you are going to create, you will do it while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire. I am not going to dress that up as a theme park. The decent thing and the survivable thing are not the same, Gresko wrote, and the game leaves the choice with you. That sentence is about Calvin and Faye. It is also a studio talking to itself.

I want the honesty rules loud before the comments invent a fake playthrough for Bart Christoff. I have not finished the hospital. I have not docked at the fish market. I have not spent Eldritch points on a New Game Plus perk I have not earned. I have not bought Holloway Manor. Movies Games and Tech's Steam-review quote on that DLC is ugly and useful: a couple of hours, 12.99 euros, content that feels cut from the main game. I have not played it. I can still put a day-one side mission on the list of things a $50 survival horror should have been big enough to include. Inventory is the other consensus complaint. Macgregor and Movies Games and Tech both describe leaving a bigger gun in a safe room and immediately finding ammo for it. Healing items that do not stack. Key items that eat the same grid as your pistol. That is Resident Evil grammar. It is also the tax. Eldritch Feats that lock cosmetics and extra guns behind a full clear is New Game Plus bait if you are the kind of player who finishes a 12-hour game and wants to leave. It is a second loop if you are DualShockers, who started over immediately. I am not grading a second loop I have not started.

Oscar Taylor-Kent at GamesRadar called it a confident adventure that can go tentacle to tentacle with modern survival horror like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, then named it Game of the Week. Hobby Consolas scored the technical flaws, then applauded the context without putting the applause in the math. TheSixthAxis missed the original's ambition and still said this one is far easier to recommend. That is the adult version of the take. Frogwares did not remake Oakmont. They admitted the detective game was the problem, spent the unique open world, and shipped a Resident Evil-shaped Lovecraft game from a studio that has been working through air raid sirens. The imitation is the design. The war is the production. Both belong on the product page.

Recommendation, stated as a Saturday Reviews desk verdict rather than a score I have not earned in a chair. Buy it if you wanted the first game to stop being a detective title that kept tripping over its own combat. Buy it if 10 to 15 hours of scarce ammo, tight inventory, and a flooded Arkham sounds like the weekend you actually have. Buy it if DualShockers' 9 and Movies Games and Tech's 9 match the hunger, and you can live with IGN's fedora. Skip it if you needed Charles Reed's mind palace to remain the series, and a leftover clue board is not enough. Skip it if PC Gamer's 70 and the short, no-return map are going to haunt the cart. Skip the $13 side mission until someone you trust finishes it. I will load Arkham. I will not pretend I already did. The reviews desk does not require a fake hour count. It requires a clear look at the object, and this object is a Ukrainian studio that rebuilt its sequel as survival horror because the detective game was the problem, then shipped it while the sirens were still real. For a Lovecraft game in 2026, that is a coherent product. It is also a confession. They stopped asking the fedora to solve murders. They asked it to survive the flood.