The Sinking City 2 Review: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] What's going on everybody, Mortem here, this time bringing you my review after 100% for The Seeking City 2.

[00:12] An interesting genre shift into survival horror following the original game after some legal drama as well, but before we get into all that to get the usual stuff out of the way, I review games after 100% all the time. It set me apart from other reviewers on the platform and while that does include the achievements, it also includes a lot more than that.

[00:28] There's a link below covering everything I go over, and my Steam profile is public and linked down below as well. Now, in case of The Thinking City 2, this is going up a day before the game officially releases, but I believe also when the 24-hour early access goes live with the Premium Edition.

[00:45] That is, of course, possible because I received a review key. I've had this game in my hands for like two weeks before you're seeing this video, and combine that with the fact that 100% on it was a little less than 20 hours, The whole thing makes for a pretty easy 100%, though you will have to run through New Game Plus for a collectible that is only available there, and you're probably not going to have enough to completely max out your character before New Game Plus as well.

[01:08] Otherwise, let's get into it. So, the original Thinking City was a big, like, investigation title. The Sinking City 2 here makes the shrift fully into survival horror, very reminiscent of things like the Resident Evil series in particular, but also a couple of other games in the genre, though I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert on them.

[01:26] With that in mind, there are still investigations in this, but they are basically you sorting out the side puzzles which reward extra bits of progression, be that upgrades for your weapons or just extra skill points, so to speak, that you can spend on your talents.

[01:41] So there's plenty of optional content that is, again, just kind of you solving those puzzles, and yet there is actually a difficulty option to make those easier or more difficult as you please, though once you know the answer, you just kind of know them, and that makes New Game Plus much easier.

[01:54] So that's kind of what is left over from the original game, because otherwise it's mostly just a Lovecraftian setting that is done very well, and I think the survival horror genre in particular fits really well here. In fact, I would go so far as to say this is one of the better Lovecraftian games I have played,

[02:10] but to be completely honest with everyone, that's a pretty low bar. Lovecraft games are very hit or miss, let's say. And we'll get into all that, of course, and another thing I want to drive home here at the beginning is that this game is very replayable.

[02:22] There is a new Game Plus system we're going to talk about that gives you extra options and rewards for playing through the game multiple times and completing little challenges. So even after that initial experience, there's still some more fun to be had if you would like to do so.

[02:34] But from there, let's dive into the rest of this. First off, we've got the technical state of the game. How is this thing running? For the most part, pretty well. Now, I do want to point out that there is an area of the game that is coming up towards the end, a place called the Fish Market. I had a lot of crashes in this area in particular. This one just seemed a little more unstable compared to the rest.

[02:53] Every other part of the game worked pretty well. Didn't really have any problems outside of occasionally like an enemy getting stuck on terrain or physics being like a little wonky on occasion, but that was about it. The main problem I had was that crashing in that one specific area.

[03:08] I could still get through it, but it was a little annoying. So certainly not unplayable or anything, but obviously I'm just one person with one set of hardware and, well, I did technically play some Steam Deck and Steam Machine. Once it's in more people's hands, especially on PC, we'll see how it's running for everybody else,

[03:23] but that was my experience. Moving on a little bit to difficulty and New Game Plus. So this game does some interesting stuff with difficulty. At a base level, you've got essentially easy through very hard, so the game becomes more difficult as you would expect.

[03:35] You are easier to kill, enemies are more difficult to kill, but that is primarily going to apply to a first playthrough. Once you start running through New Game Plus and unlocking some of the New Game Plus options, you can make the game incredibly easy, even on the max difficulty.

[03:49] More on that in a moment, though, because I do want to give a quick mention for the game's puzzle difficulty. You can choose between breezy or brainy. The main thing this does is it highlights important information on the clues you'll find

[04:01] to make solving the puzzles easier. Now, to be honest with you, all that's really going to do is save you some reading because if you read through the clues, it, for the most part, just kind of straight up tells you what to do. And so breezy just kind of goes the extra step and specifically highlights the important stuff

[04:15] so you don't have to read every note you find, and that would be about it. Now, let's talk about this New Game Plus system. So New Game Plus here is called Ex Oblivion. As you play through the game, you'll be completing a bunch of different challenges, like interacting with enemies or using your weapons in certain ways, that type of stuff.

[04:30] As you complete those challenges and ultimately complete the game, you will earn sort of points, Eldritch points, that you can then spend on New Game Plus rewards that you can use in New Game Plus. So every time you start Ex Oblivion, after having unlocked those rewards,

[04:45] you get just instant access to them. This is some cosmetic stuff to customize your character a little bit, yes, But it's also incredibly powerful stuff like giving yourself the grenade launcher right at the beginning of the game, which will one-shot most things. Overall, I like a system like this.

[04:58] It just kind of gives you added reason to play through an otherwise kind of short game and interact with it in fun ways that wouldn't be possible in a first playthrough and would honestly kind of ruin the experience if it was. So overall, I enjoy it, but that's what the important stuff is to know.

[05:12] Moving on a little bit let talk story setup and my thoughts on it The Thinking City 2 takes place in 1929 in Arkham Except Arkham has in fact flooded The flood has brought with it some sort of entity known as the Slyther The Slyther

[05:26] right after the game starts, begins inhabiting the dead, reanimating them and causing them to attack people and the standard stuff. Now, between the floods and the Slyther, people have started evacuating the city, but that's a little complicated for our main protagonist, Calvin,

[05:40] because he and his partner, Faye, are in a bit of a predicament. In typical Lovecraftian fashion, they went delving into the Eldritch Unknown and came out a little scarred. In particular, they tried to enter someplace known as the Dreamland,

[05:54] and after doing that, Faye never woke up, and Calvin is left with his comatose girlfriend, and he's trying to save her life, which leads him to, when the game starts, tracking down some Eldritch ritual and attempts to save her life

[06:06] and trying to get her back, and that's the crux of the main story. You've got all this stuff with Arkham going on, you're trying to save Faith, and as of right now, since we are a little bit pre-release here, that is as much as I'm going to say. I'm going to keep everything else to myself for the time being to hopefully avoid going into too much of spoiler territory.

[06:22] But I do want to talk a bit more about the story in broad terms, and beyond that setup, you might consider some of this stuff a spoiler, so if you don't want that, this is the time to click off, for sure. Even then, though, I'm not going to spoil, like, every plot beat or anything.

[06:34] With that out of the way, broad strokes, I would say I enjoyed the story for what it is. If you play a lot of Lovecraftian games, you kind of get the gist. They all tend to more or less go the same way. And with that in mind, I would say that I found the ending kind of bittersweet.

[06:49] It does have some very typical Lovecraftian approaches, but it was still unique enough, even with that context, that I think the ending was pretty good. However, another thing I want to point out is that the dialogue is a little corny in places.

[07:03] Now, I think that's a mix of a few different things. I'm not even saying it's bad, per se. It's just that they're clearly trying to replicate the 1920s, and obviously people back then talked a little bit different than what we're used to today,

[07:16] and I think that combined with them trying to show off the intimacy of Calvin and Faye's relationship together, both the time period and that kind of more intimate relationship talk, can just kind of make it seem a little sillier than they're probably going for at times.

[07:31] But then again, that might just be a me thing. it might not bother anybody else. So we'll see how it pans out, I suppose. But for me, that's kind of where it was. Otherwise, I will say there are a lot of moments in the story where the stuff you wind up doing can seem a little pointless

[07:44] because of what then propels you into the next act, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in the terms of eldritch horror because beating your head against the wall senselessly is kind of par for the course there, actually.

[07:56] But just so you're aware of it, I guess. Mostly, I enjoyed the story. Probably not going to be like a blockbuster or win any awards, that type of stuff. But it was enjoyable for what it is. Moving on a little bit, let's talk progression. This game does have a decent bit of progression,

[08:09] coming in the form of dream essence, talents, weapons and their upgrades, your inventory upgrades, so let's talk about those. So, completing puzzles and connecting all the clues for a given investigation

[08:21] or just finding it out in the world will reward you with dream essence. Dream essence is then spent on upgrading your talents, as well as the slots to equip more of them. You can equip one major and three minor talents.

[08:33] You get a lot more than that, but these have a lot of different gameplay-inducing effects. Some of them are specifically from the new Game Plus system. However, they can do things like massively increase your damage, but also massively increase the damage you take at the same time,

[08:47] make you reload your weapons faster, make you take a little less damage generally, and just sort of other unique effects you'd probably be used to if you played this type of game before. Then we have your weapons. You start out with a basic pistol, and over the course of the game, you'll find more,

[09:00] things like a Tommy gun, the ever-present shotgun, a rifle, a grenade launcher, that type of thing, and managing the inventory for those, and in particular their ammo types, as well as the weapons themselves, is part of the inventory upgrade system.

[09:14] So your inventory space starts very, very limited. You'll find upgrades over the course of the game. They often give them out as rewards for exploration and things, and this gives you more space to store all of the guns and whatnot you'll be finding. Now before we move on, I do also want to mention that the guns can have upgrades to them.

[09:29] you can find upgrades that then expand the capability of that weapon. There are two per weapon, so it is possible to find and use all of them. However, I will say, because of the location of some of them, the New Game Plus option, where you get some really good weapons really early,

[09:44] doesn't include the upgrades to them. So that means you can only get the upgrades at the appropriate time, even though you got the weapon early, and that is especially noteworthy for the rifle in particular, because those aren't until the very end of the game,

[09:56] whereas the grenade launcher is so strong it doesn't matter anyway. But that's mostly what you're looking at progression-wise. So let's move on to the gameplay and world section a bit here. So I do want to start this section off by explaining that I think they nailed the vibe of Lovecraftian horror for sure.

[10:13] The whole thing is kind of deeply unsettling. Everything is wet and gory. And a lot of it screams, hey, you should be anywhere else. And some of that is very traditional horror. Some of it leans into the 1920s theme in particular.

[10:26] Some of it, of course, is the Lovecraftian aspect of it, like we get to explore a little bit of Miskatonic University On the 1920s side we get to explore this sort of hotel area that has a very like Flapper era vibe to it The classic abandoned hospital the creepy fish market which leans into Shadow over Innsmouth of course

[10:46] So I think they just really nailed the vibe. Each major area of the game is fully explorable, and you can kind of go at your own pace. But the game is divided up into several different chapters. You can freely explore and move around in that chapter.

[11:00] However, each of them has a point of no return. that, like, once you go past that point, you can't go back. And thus, everything in that chapter is no longer available to you. But they also have a really good map system that marks everything down.

[11:14] They let you know if you've found everything in a given area or a specific room. And so it's very straightforward to make sure that you didn't miss anything. But each act is like its own self-contained bit of exploration, be that navigating the waterways of the flooded city,

[11:29] exploring the abandoned hospital, the fish market, etc. In very typical survival horror fashion, there are safe rooms dotted around. This is where you can manually save the game, though the game will auto-save at important moments as well.

[11:42] This is especially noteworthy, though, for the fish market, like I mentioned, because that was a little bit unstable, so I found myself saving a lot more there than anywhere else. From the safe room, you can access your stash, which is going to help you with your inventory management,

[11:54] as well as the talent table, which is where you will set and deal with those as well. And so those safe rooms marked by a specific door are where you're going to basically take refuge from the Eldritch Horrors from the cosmos.

[12:06] But other than that, there's a few things I want to mention. You've got the crafting system. So outside of weapons and all that, you'll be picking up a lot of materials and healing items. You can then spend those materials on doing things like crafting ammunition or healing items, etc.

[12:21] And so that's kind of how you'll keep your supplies up as you move. Now on the supply front in particular, I will say for a first playthrough on normal, They do a good job of making sure that you do not have a lot of supplies.

[12:33] And while you can fight basically everything, if you choose to do that, you need to be really careful with how you're doing it and making sure that you're using the appropriate weapon for the appropriate enemy and kind of conserving your resources as much as possible.

[12:45] Because there will come a moment where you kind of have that tension of not having enough resources for the thing you might be about to do. and while boss fights have respawning caches of materials that you can then pick up and make sure you're not completely impossibly out of luck, that kind of thing.

[13:00] But, of course, managing resources in a survival horror game plays a really big role here. And if you're not careful, you may find yourself just wanting to avoid enemies completely, which is sometimes possible. Sometimes you will need to kill them, but resource management is a big part of the game here

[13:14] unless you're playing on, like, super easy mode. Or if you unlock the unlimited ammunition in New Game Plus, of course. But beyond just that stuff, there's a few other things in the gameplay-wise. So there are those side investigations I mentioned. These will often see you backtracking and reading through clues and stuff, connecting the dots.

[13:29] And the reward for those is usually more progression, inventory upgrades, upgrades to your weapons, etc., like I mentioned. And so they are usually worth doing as they both reward you, but also give you a little more background on what happened here and can kind of fill in the blanks for you a little bit.

[13:44] Other than that, there's just a lot of, I would say, puzzle solving. Pretty much every main chapter of the game has a core problem you need to solve, and this is how the side investigations typically work as well. This is basically going to be you gathering the clues to figure out what you need to do,

[13:59] then doing that thing, and then usually there's some sort of big confrontation at the end of that area in addition to all the regular stuff. So that's kind of the general flow of the gameplay, if you will. Which is a good time to then, of course, talk about the combat.

[14:13] So, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, a good portion of combat is using the appropriate weapon against the appropriate enemy, and also, on occasion, stomping these gross worms, which you've probably seen on screen every once in a while.

[14:26] Now, I will say one point of criticism here, actually, is that the stomping the worms, the slither worms that can reanimate the corpses, is very inconsistent. There are times where you need to do that to prevent the worms from, like, reanimating corpses and you having to kill the same enemy again.

[14:41] and while they have a limit on that, the bodies will eventually just kind of like fade into gory mess, so they stop reanimating. The problem is that the clear gameplay intention is you to stomp these worms, and so they don't pop back up. I got that.

[14:53] However, the game is inconsistent about the worms that it shows you. Some of them are just background, like they don't actually do anything, and then some of them are actually going to reanimate a corpse. And the game is a little inconsistent about showing you which worms are which,

[15:07] and other times they're everywhere, and that's why obviously the moment you're not really supposed to worry about it, but sometimes it is something you need to worry about, and it's just very inconsistent, and I didn't care for that specifically. However, otherwise, as I mentioned, there are a bunch of different enemy types.

[15:21] They are typically weak to one weapon or another, or you can find unique ways to take them out. So, for instance, one of the first enemies you fight that aren't just zombies are these weird, like, little jumpy horror guys. So, there's a few different ways to take these guys out.

[15:34] You can just shoot them a couple times with a pistol, they'll die. One shot from a shotgun or any weapon above that here should do it. Or, if you want to conserve some ammunition, these guys will jump at you. If you dodge at just the right time, they crash and burn and are stunned on the floor,

[15:49] and then you can stomp them and kill them in one hit that way at the cost of zero ammo The regular zombies can usually take a couple of shots even from powerful weapons However they will on occasion spawn weak points that you can shoot for extra damage There are talents that even lead into this

[16:04] But another thing you can do in order to save ammunition there is shoot them in the knees and knock them over and then stomp them to get some extra damage in while conserving your ammo. So a lot of enemies have things like weak points, weak to specific weapons,

[16:16] or there's like alternative little ways you can go about fighting them that will take less ammunition. and you deciding which method to use in a given situation based on things like enemy numbers and your own positioning

[16:28] adds a certain layer of tension with, again, the relatively scarce resources on a first playthrough that I think is most of the compelling gameplay here. I think they did a really good job with that, and it's where I was certainly having the most fun with the overall concept.

[16:41] Combine that with the Elder Tor aspects and the fact that I think a Lovecraft game just fits the genre super well, and you're off to the races. Now, beyond just that stuff, a couple other notes before we move on as the gameplay and combat is pretty straightforward.

[16:54] You basically want to maintain space from the enemies, kind of figure out what weapons to use when, like I mentioned, and just keep enemies away from you. When they inevitably get close, however, you do have a dodge, and I would say the key thing is to just make sure you don't get cornered.

[17:09] That's when you're in for a really bad time, and probably when you'll actually die, because other than that, it's, again, straightforward enough that I doubt it'll be too much of an issue, even if you run out of resources. But, in the inevitable event that you take some health damage, you have some choices for healing.

[17:24] Usually just various levels of healing that you can craft for yourself after a certain point to get you back up to full health. Otherwise, I'd say that's about all there is to combat, so let's keep it moving a little bit. Let's talk Steam Deck and Steam Machine.

[17:36] So, for the Steam Deck first, currently it has a rating of Unknown, and I would say that I wouldn't recommend it on Steam Deck. It can play it. I think it'll probably wind up getting the playable rating, but with every setting to the absolute lowest.

[17:50] While I could play the game, it would regularly dip into, like, the teens and twenties in terms of FPS. It was also pretty clear that the Steam Deck was struggling with it, and it got, like, noticeably hot to the touch, in a way that, as somebody who uses the Steam Deck a decent amount, I was a little bit concerned about.

[18:05] So, technically speaking, you can play it on there, but I don't think it's going to be the best experience. On the flip side of that, the Steam machine, which I was also able to play it on, ran it very, very well. No issues at all. I think that just a little bit of extra power is really what the game needed.

[18:19] You're probably going to be stuck at 1080 in terms of resolution, but beyond that, it looks much better. It runs super smooth there. If you happen to be using the Steam controller, the game plays well on controller. These games are, I would say, pretty common on a controller in particular.

[18:33] And so on the Steam machine, it was a much better experience, and I imagine it will probably get verified there. So that's kind of what to expect, or at least what I experienced. Moving on a little bit. Now let's talk about positives, negatives, and wrap this thing up.

[18:45] So on the positive side of things, for me, it was the atmosphere. I do love a good Lovecraftian horror setting, and I think they narrowed that part of it. I also love the gameplay tension, the resource management, the different enemies,

[18:58] and trying to figure out the best way to attack an enemy in a given moment. The boss fights were okay. I really enjoyed the new Game Plus replayability setup. And so there's a lot going on there that I enjoyed. But on the negative side of things, as I mentioned, for me in particular, the dialogue in places was a little wishy-washy.

[19:14] Unfortunately, I can't show you exact examples, because if I do, I would just be spoiling the story. But that combined with more technical problems in the fish market, and on top of that, the inconsistency on like stomping the worms or not stomping the worms,

[19:27] or when that seemed to matter or not matter was a little annoying to kind of try to figure out. But those are relatively minor issues in the grand scheme of things, and I don't think they detract from the main experience either, so not the worst stuff in the world, which brings me to my conclusion.

[19:43] The base game price for The Sinking City 2 is $50 US, the deluxe edition is $55, and the premium edition is $60. It's worth noting that the Premium Edition in particular seems to come with an extra, like, two-hour roughly mission,

[19:58] which I do not love as a practice, to be clear. But whether or not this game is worth that amount of money to you, I think, really comes down to if you plan on replaying it. I'll be honest, if I had only played through this game once and had an okay time, I would prefer to see it a little cheaper.

[20:13] However, it has that really good New Game Plus system that I enjoyed messing around with. I ran through it extra. I could actually see myself playing through it again if I didn't have other things to get to. And in that sense, I think it justifies the value for the price you are paying.

[20:27] So I think you need to ask yourself where you fall in that particular line, and keep that in mind when you go to buy it. But for me, this game is definitely a buy. I had a pretty good time with it. And I think it's one of the better Lovecraftian games out there,

[20:39] but again, to be very clear, that was a kind of low bar. But that is just about everything I've got to say about this one. Certainly hope you enjoyed the video. Now, if you did, by all means, like, comment, subscribe, or YouTube jazz if you wind up picking this one up.

[20:51] I'd love to know what you think about it. But regardless of any event, truly, just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.

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