The Sinking City 2

I can’t bring myself to give Sinking City 2 a negative review. I still want to support a game made by developers from our part of the world, and I also can’t say that the game is outright bad. But unfortunately, after finishing it, I was left with far more frustration than enjoyment. The demo made a very strong impression on me. After playing it, I was genuinely looking forward to the full release: the atmosphere worked, exploring the world felt interesting, and overall it seemed like this could turn into a really solid survival horror game. But after around five hours, my opinion started changing pretty quickly. At some point, I no longer wanted to explore the world or figure out what was going on — I was simply waiting for the game to end. My biggest issue is the combat system. You can clearly feel the influence of Resident Evil 2, but in my opinion, the game also borrowed some of its worst aspects. The character feels very stiff, and some enemy attacks feel almost scripted: once an enemy starts a certain animation, it often feels like you are going to take damage no matter what. There is no proper dodge or block, so sometimes avoiding a hit feels physically impossible. This becomes especially frustrating during arena-like encounters where the game throws a large number of enemies at you. Yes, there is usually ammo and other resources scattered around, but the character reloads slowly, there is no automatic reload, and you cannot even pick up items while the reload animation is playing. When several enemies are attacking you from different directions, these small limitations become incredibly annoying. The weapon and explosive balance also raises a lot of questions. Take the grenade launcher, for example. To me, a grenade launcher should be able to kill at least a regular enemy with one direct hit. Here, it is awkward to aim and the damage simply does not match what you expect from this type of weapon. Firing a grenade at a basic enemy only to see it keep walking toward you just feels wrong. The same goes for explosive barrels. If an enemy is at full health, a barrel exploding right next to them may still not kill them. Sure, you can use barrels to finish off already damaged enemies, but that removes a lot of the satisfaction from using the environment. I see a red barrel next to a regular monster, I shoot it, and I expect an obvious result. When that result does not happen, it does not make the game feel more challenging — it just feels unsatisfying. There are also serious performance issues. Visually, the game simply does not look technically impressive enough to justify this level of performance. Getting around 40 FPS on high settings (80 with DLSS enabled) is pretty strange considering the level of visual quality. At the same time, I did not really experience major crashes or heavy stuttering, so the problem is more about how demanding the game is compared to what it actually looks like. Another issue is the darkness. I spent almost the entire game with the flashlight turned on. I understand that this is a horror game and darkness is part of the atmosphere, but when the flashlight basically becomes the default way of seeing the game, the effect wears off and starts becoming tiring instead. The budget limitations are also very noticeable. There are very few cutscenes, while a huge portion of the story and lore is delivered through notes and radio messages. This is where I completely disconnected from the story. I do not want to read dozens of notes just to understand the main plot of a game. Optional lore, extra world-building, small stories about specific characters — sure. But when a significant part of the narrative exists primarily in text documents, I see that as a problem with the storytelling. The world itself is also not particularly simple, so at some point I just stopped carefully reading every note I found. Maybe that is exactly why the story started feeling confusing toward the end and I did not fully understand some of what was happening. You could say that this is my fault and that I should have read everything. But I think it is the game’s job to make the player interested in the story and deliver it in a way that makes them actually want to understand what is going on, rather than forcing them to go through yet another page of text. The storytelling itself also feels very fragmented. A lot of characters appear, say a few things, and then seemingly disappear without ever becoming meaningful or properly developed. Because of that, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand who actually matters, what their role in the story is, and why you should care about them at all. Combined with how much important information is hidden in notes and radio messages, the whole narrative starts to feel disjointed, and at some point I simply found myself confused about what was happening and why. The progression system was another thing I found strangely underexplained. By the end of the game, I had only unlocked around 45% of the skill tree. A large number of skills were still locked, and I genuinely had no idea how I was supposed to unlock them. Some of them apparently require certain occult activities or actions, but I never encountered whatever the game expected me to do. Maybe I missed something, but if you can go through most or even all of the game without understanding how a huge part of the progression system works, I think that is a problem with how that system is communicated to the player. The resurrection mechanic also felt almost pointless to me. When you resurrect, you come back with very low health, and your health does not actually recover. So yes, technically you are alive again, but you are still one or two hits away from dying. In practice, it rarely felt like a meaningful second chance and more like an unnecessary mechanic that the game could have easily done without. There is also a companion character who reminded me of Banishers. The problem is that there is very little meaningful interaction with her, while most of her presence comes down to comments during gameplay. Unfortunately, many of those lines started getting on my nerves very quickly: she constantly comments on things, rushes the player, and occasionally says things that just feel unnatural. Instead of feeling like an actual companion, she often became another source of irritation. That said, there are things I genuinely liked. The level design is good. Some locations were genuinely interesting to explore. The puzzles are solid. There are also some interesting individual mechanics. For example, being able to attach an axe to the shotgun and use it as a proper melee weapon is a really cool idea. I cannot remember seeing exactly this kind of implementation in another game. And overall, throughout the game there are many small ideas that clearly have potential. I think that is exactly why my feelings about Sinking City 2 are so mixed. The game has good ideas, atmosphere, interesting locations, and the foundation for something genuinely great. But almost every good idea is accompanied by some frustrating design decision, and much of that potential feels underdeveloped. In the end, the demo made me really look forward to this game. The full version made me look forward to only one thing — the moment it would finally end. And that probably sums up my experience better than anything else. Windows 11 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13500 - RAM: 32 GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 - VRAM: 8 GB

The Sinking City 2 игра, которая очень старается показать тебе, какая она красивая. Ты идёшь. Смотришь. Восхищаешься. И ждёшь, когда наконец начнётся что-нибудь интересное. А оно как-то не начинается. Визуально всё действительно красиво, но сюжет, персонажи, исследование мира всё какое-то недожатое. Потенциал огромный, а раскрыли его примерно на половину. И потом смотришь на ценник и такой: "А за что, собственно? За текстуры?" Короче, красиво, но пустовато. За фуллпрайс на**й. Финальный вердикт: 10 просраных часов из 10 часов прохождения.

What I loved about The Sinking City 2 is how it tries to be its own thing while taking inspiration from Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill, and The Evil Within. Put those games in a blender and you’ll probably get something similar, and honestly, that’s not a bad thing. My favorite part is the map design. It mixes Resident Evil's interconnected areas with Silent Hill's atmosphere. I love being able to fully loot an area before moving forward, especially when the areas are well designed. Not you, Fish Market. You suck. I haven't played the first game, and I don't think you need to. This game takes you on its own journey with plenty of twists and, well, a LOT of buns. The story is pretty neat, although it sometimes jumps between plot points too quickly, which caused some confusion. That might also be because I didn't read many of the notes, there are A LOT of them. The side characters are alright, but most of them feel underdeveloped and unfinished. The encounters and monsters are generally well balanced, but I hate how scripted some fights are. You can completely clear a hall, loot everything, and kill every enemy, only for the game to spawn another group when you pick up a specific item. If I already cleared the hall, I should be able to feel safe going back through it. Instead, I'm thinking, "I know exactly where they're going to spawn once I pick up this item." That makes the encounters predictable rather than scary. The Mr. X wannabe genuinely scared the ♥♥♥♥ out of me the first time, but once the initial scare wears off, the enemy doesn't have much going for it. Weapons could also use better feedback. The shotgun is the biggest example. Sometimes you shoot an enemy directly and it barely reacts or staggers. A shotgun should feel powerful, but here it can feel strangely weak. My biggest technical complaint is the engine. Everything has this weird, waxy look, and the physics don't always feel right. I understand this is an indie developer, but the engine really hurts the presentation. Despite all that, I genuinely had a great time. The exploration, atmosphere, puzzles, combat, and map design scratch that survival horror itch really well. It's not perfect, but I enjoyed it enough that I actually want to go back and 100% the game, which says a lot.

I wanted to like it, I still think I could. The dealbreaker for me is honestly the audio used for the action sequences are so overly compressed it breaks the immersion. The game sounds great, but then when you go to stomp, it sounds like it came from audio from a cellphone. Guns sounds are heavily compressed as well. The animations, voice acting, everything else has a ton of dynamic range, besides the action, which there is a lot of. A shame really, as I really want to keep playing, but I can't keep listening to it.

The Sinking City 1 se centra más en una jugabilidad detectivesca sobre seguir pistas y resolver acertijos. The Sinking City 2 tiene la esencia propia de cualquier survival horror que se precie con ese toque de Lovecraft tan bien insertado. Ambos juegos tienen su encanto, y ambos son geniales. No están conectados, lo cual hace que cada uno tenga su propia identidad. 10/10 al equipo ucraniano que desarrolló este tremendo juegazo a pesar de todas las dificultades.

Yeah yeah a good survival horror game with a good plot and good world building

Не те щоб на 100% у захваті, але натяк на український Резіік і справді є.