The Sinking City 2

Я гадав в цьому році вийде тільки один Resident Evil а тут вийшов ще один! Неочикувано і приємно.

General thoughts: I Played through in two days. Took my time, explored, read everything. Firstly. THE GAME APPEARS TO BE IN A FINISHED STATE. How wonderful! In these trying times its rare to get a game on release date that is actually in a finished state. This on its own is enough for a positive rating (the bar has fallen that low). But my positive rating is based on more. So firstly, the types of games I like related to this: walking sims and horror games like silent hill, resident evil, and alan wake. This gameplay is probably closest to Silent hill of those three mentioned (SH2 remake and SH f). If you like those, you will probably like this one but don’t expect fast smooth action combat like with RE and a ton of boss fights. There was just a few bosses. I think its important to understand what kind of game this is so you can manage your expectations going in. Its very comparable to Silent Hill 2 and f IMO. Things I liked: Doesn’t contain gameplay elements that serve no purpose like having to reply in dialogue (especially when it doesn’t effect the game outcome). Speaking of, game is pretty linear. I think that is nice. Often linear games have better stories. Beautiful game. They really brought in some great artistic and musical talent to bring this game to life. I kept finding myself stopping to just look at textures or designs up close. Really something. Wonderful voice acting though some dialogue was a little odd. I think that’s probably a translation issue. Tone doesn’t always translate even if you use similar meaning words. There was a mermaid. And she was perfect. Right amount of horror and beauty. Faithful to the lore. About time a lovecraft story had a siren in it. I liked the three main settings for each arc. There is also an apartment you start in and it was eye candy. But I was slightly disappointed in the very last area. I also love old big ships and would have liked to explore the ship more. Love that its set in the 1930s. Art deco was popular and probably the last time (in the U.S anyway) where they made beautiful buildings. No technical problems. I didn’t encounter any bugs that I noticed. but I think I saw frame rate drops a few times during combat. Nothing too dramatic. I have pretty good specs though so others might have problems I didn’t. The menu settings had a few options to help with motion sickness and also the game is in 3rd person. I am prone to motion sickness in games but had zero problems with this one. If you are like me in that regard, turning on the reticule is a big help. This must have been something the devs put in extra work on because there are a lot of little things they have to do to reduce motion sickness and so many studios just don’t do it (maybe they don’t realize it’s a big deal for a lot of players). I liked the bit in the hospital prosthetics room that was homage to Ukrainian soldiers. Heart breaking. But I read every single one. It makes this game even more impressive when you know a bit about the dev teams situation. Things I don’t like: Crafting in survival games when there is a very small inventory allotment. All this does is force me to constantly waste time running back and forth to stash containers. And I don’t like my time wasted on tedious things like this. Even more so when every setting is a maze that changes. Likewise I generally don’t like small inventory space for a number of reasons like the one I just said but the second problem is the weapons take up a lot of space. So here is the deal, you don’t get a lot of ammo, but you do get variety. Yet you cant carry more than 2 weapons at a time otherwise your inventory is full. And this is pretty much true all the way until near the end when you finally get a bit more space. Because the ammo doesn’t stack very much. Only 10 for the rifle. I forget the others but its way too small. And then you need crafting items to make ammo. 3 types. AND you have to carry around items to unlock things. And if you need health items, forget about it. Anyway I found myself only using handgun and shotgun for the entire game until the last boss. because it just wasn't practical to carry more than that and those are the two most versatile. Although the rifle does better damage, you also NEVER get opportunities for ranged attacks. so why is there even a rifle in the game? Only came in handy during boss fights. I just really don’t like this in games and really wish tiny inventories stopped being “a thing”. Combat was, in my opinion, very difficult. It was a bit clunky like silent hill 2 (remake) but you get swarmed often like in a RE game but without the speed of movement of RE. I ended up switching to easy difficulty after an hour of game play. and after a few hours more ended up switching to invincibility. I am not particularly skilled at combat games but I can usually get by. Not with this one. Other minor complaints. Early in the game you find a letter from your neighbor about asking someone to feed her cat. But you cant feed the cat anything and never see it. : ( Early in the game there is a safe. I assumed, incorrectly, I would find more clues elsewhere to open it but I didn’t and you can never return to that area ever. You are locked out of the area near their apartment very quickly so make sure you look up the code and get the safe continents. I never did figure out what the code was anyway or how to determine it. There was one puzzle for the mermaid lyrics. I looked up the answer and still have no idea how the numbers are derived from the lyrics. I am okay with not getting a puzzles answer but typically I should be able to see how it’s the answer after its given. If I still cant, then there are issues with the puzzle design. Neutral or mixed feelings: (more like suggestions or thoughts I have) Limited detective gameplay features. The first SC was heavy on detective gameplay but it didn’t work super great. I was a little surprised to find this one has almost none and what there was is optional and not really necessary. But I am not sure how to make it better. The game “nobody wants to die” and “alan wake 2” have some of the better detective gameplay ideas I have seen. Might be worth using them as inspiration. “The city below” is mentioned multiple times in the game and I was a bit disappointed in what that ended up being. Or at least what I saw of it. Maybe there will be a DLC with an actual city? No deep sea diving. In fact you never get in the water except knee high water. Or a boat. Maybe this was dropped because there is dialogue that alludes to there being deep sea diving. Dark water that is chin high is creepy. They could have added some of that in for the vibes. Never felt like I found some little hidden spot. Player is forced through specific paths with no deviations or little hidden spots. Would have liked more lore. I honestly did not really understand the ending. I don’t know what happened. So I will have to watch a youtube video explaining it. (I read everything) So maybe more should have been added about that and what was going on. I think that there could be more story in the hospital setting with the creature god thing and what their objective was and also explain a bit more about Fays power or whatever it is she is. Idk it wasn’t explained much. Like many linear games, once you leave an area you cant go back. But the guy at the university seemed like he could have been a character you go back to multiple times and interact with. i feel like he was wasted potential as a character. -Lastly, there are always things to criticize about any piece of art. The artist (devs) have to make compromises and work under constraints. i acknowledge this. I really enjoyed the game and I think its worthy of praise and something the dev team should be proud of accomplishing. Its at AAA level (imo) and maybe better since it actually seems finished on release.

Зазвичай я не роблю предзамовлення на ігри, ця - стала виключенням. Пройшов за 13 годин, в які розробники, окрім приємної (нехай і РЕзівської) механіки і геймплею, вплели прям дику кількість творів Лавкрафта. Вона лінійна, але на останній катсцені волосся встає дибки навіть там, де ти про нього не знав. Розробникам - повага, в моїх очах виросли настільки, що будь-яку іншу їх гру я буду чекати, і з великою долею вірогідності - передзамовляти. Враховуючи, що вона коштує на 30% менше ніж всі ААА - це просто дикий мастхев для всіх любителів хоч одного з жанрів, які тут присутні. P.S. Для тих хто очікував такого самого геймплею, як і в першій частині - погані новини, це робить гру іншою, але поганою - точно ні. Категорично рекомендую

Developers worked hard on this game, I appreciate that. Thanks guys and good luck with your future projects :)

I really enjoyed this game a lot. I knew from reading dev updates that this was planned to be more survival horror focused than investigation focused like the first one. I was definitely intrigued. I enjoyed the investigations from the first one but combat was not great. In this one, the combat is a lot more in your face and feels very much like the experience you get from older Resident Evil games or Silent Hill. The investigations are simplified and treated more like an optional mechanic for getting certain upgrades. Since you are not a PI in this game, this made sense and fit with the sped up pace. The area settings are great. The ambient audio really sets the tone. Exploration rewards well. The monster design is fitting... It ticked a lot of boxes for me. Honestly, if you like the style of older RE games and Silent Hill games, you'll probably enjoy this.

I was a kickstarter backer for this game. I gotta say, I'm quite disappointed. As a big fan of the first game, I did not expect it to be so different to the first. The play tests during development gave me an an impression of what the gameplay loop might look like (it is indeed a "Resident Evil"-esque game, not my style), and I was ready to make my peace with that. But I can not make my peace with the fact that the world is not open as it was in the first game. Instead, the player is working their way from one isolated area to the next, mainly fighting their way through a bunch of increasingly frustrating encounters, and solving a usually simple puzzle in the meantime to progress the story. That involves a bunch of backtracking, opening shortcuts and re-checking the map a dozen times per minute. The only constant throughout the game was the presence of the protagonist and his sidekick, the love interest. I wanted more interplay with NPCs, some of whom had the potential for strange and interesting storytelling, side missions and the like. Instead, you meet an NPC, interact with them maybe two, three times and then it's off to another story part, never to return. The promotional material suggested a bit more impact through these characters that the game sadly lacked in a big way. The worst offenders in that regard were the lovingly called GRINDMAWS. I saw them for a total of three minutes tops and they were FEATURED in Discord posts, like they'll be a big deal. Nope. Plus: you basically just meet five neutral NPCs throughout the entire game (Strangeface McWormEyes, Tied Up FishWoman™, Empty-Head Surgeon(barely counts imo), the Mi-Go and Granny ScaleCheeks). In total, you travel across five areas in the main game. The scope feels tiny compared to the first game. The story itself is not tied to the first game either, same as the gameplay mentioned earlier. This is not a sequel, it's a spinoff, and not a good one in my opinion. Good thing theres a first game, now remastered, that I get to enjoy as often as I want to.

Love it but only missing thing is a great soundtrack. The first games OST was truly incredible and soooo underrated. This game barely has any tracks, or at least, none that are really memorable. But the gameplay is amazing, it's pretty much RE2 Remake + SH2 Remake with the first games setting.

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A sequel in name only, abandons almost all open world and detective aspects and goes all-in on action. Not a bad game by any stretch but for me it loses the atmosphere and intrigue of the original in favour of riding the recent Resident Evil/Silent Hill bandwagon. I would still recommend the game overall, at least on sale, especially for survival horror fans but would advise caution for fans of the original.