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The Sinking City 2 Recasts Frogwares' Detective Series as Shorter Survival Horror

Early reviews say redesigned combat, a grid inventory and pared-down investigation reduce playtime, complicating New Game+ promises.

Overview

  • PC Gamer's review published Monday, August 17, describes the sequel as a deliberate shift from open-world detective work to a series of constrained survival-horror set pieces.
  • Frogwares is scheduled to release the game on August 18 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, with the studio publicly promising New Game+ carryover and a free HDR post-launch patch.
  • The game changes core systems by adding a dodge move, removing stealth and the sanity meter, and focusing encounters on ammo management and puzzle-locked locations.
  • Inventory and crafting now use a Resident Evil–style grid that reviewers call fiddly, and the PC Gamer review observed that New Game+ did not preserve inventory upgrades despite earlier promotional claims.
  • Reviewers report a shorter, more linear main campaign of roughly 15 hours that never returns players to the flooded streets of the first game, a choice that will please survival-horror fans but disappoint players seeking deeper detective gameplay and longer exploration.