The Sinking City 2

From the jump the story hit close to home with me as someone with a partner who’s dealing with chronic health issues and been there when she’s been unconscious with scares in the past in and out of the hospital. This story starts with Calvin taking care of Faye as she seems to be in a coma. It has you do quick time events to take care of her but then the bid farewell action came up and it hit me so hard. I just sat there remembering my feelings of having a hard time saying goodbye even when I have to go to do stuff to take care of her. I couldn’t imagine her being in a coma but I would do all I can to support her and never leave her side which makes this part so much more difficult. Maybe I'm looking into this too much with the game but it got me on a good start with connecting to it.

So this game is more of a survival horror entry for this series being made more similar to that of the Resident Evil 2 remake but the combat is closer to that of Silent Hill 2 remake and the Dead Space remake, especially the latter with how hard hitting it feels the melee is.  I feel when it comes to this being a modern survival horror game, it is put together really well, only thing I would say that could be a little better is maybe having a separate tab for key items because, especially early on in the game, there are times when you are to get multiple key items and juggling that with your weapon, ammo and health can be a little annoying as it makes it so you have more times to go between the destination and the safe room more than what should be needed.  But speaking of that I really like how the safe room fits into the lore of the game in that it makes the most sense of safe rooms in survival horror.  It being a spell that is cast at rooms along the way that essentially teleports Calvin back to his home.  I just really liked how it made it make more sense especially with modern survival horror where safe rooms in newer RE games tend to be this random safe haven that enemies can't enter.

There’s a surprise boss fight in the game that I finished just thinking of how fun it was. It came completely out of nowhere and was really fun and maybe up there with some of the great survival horror boss fights like those in Silent Hill 2 like Abstract Daddy and Moraeu in Resident Evil Village. The music for it was good too and helped give a vibe similar to the former of the mentioned ones. I really liked the story until the end where it felt like the writers didn’t know what to do so they went with an ending made to feel like an unexpected twist but it felt more like it was trying to be convoluted to feel deep but in reality it just lacked emotional depth which sucks because the story going throughout the game was building so much potential but in the end I still enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit. I enjoyed it so much that I immediately went on to play the new game plus mode: Ex Oblivione. It was fun with an infinite ammo grenade launcher but still a challenge at parts since not everything is one shot with it and reloading takes a while. I can see playing the game again sometime with other modded weapons as well as just playing the game regularly again as its survival horror aspects were done really well.

A lot of discourse I've seen online in regards to this game is comparing it to the first Sinking City game and it's pretty mixed with people's reactions to it.  A common criticism states that this sequel traded the soul of the first game for a more accessible genre, which is more fun to play but they felt the game lost itself.  I partly disagree with this because I would say this game definitely did lose the vibe and soul of the first game which could have been a defining cornerstone for the series, but rather it replaced it with its own soul.  The first game had meta humor sprinkled throughout with a heavy focus on discovery and feeling more like a detective.  This game makes the detective aspect become more of a side thing that's only done to get skill points but it still has the humor but instead of meta humor it's more of a dry tongue in cheek kind of humor.  In spite of my feelings with the ending, I like what the story was going for with the love story it was building.  I would say I feel like it would be more appropriate that this game just be named differently since its only connection to the first game is only revealed in a bonus file only earned in the new game plus version of the story.  One thing I do miss from the first game is the sanity meter. I feel like it definitely would have been more interesting if they did something with it in this game too as so much of it made me feel like this is the closest I've come to playing a modern version of my favorite game, Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem, so it would have been cool if they at least kept the subtle sanity effects from the first Sinking City game.  Maybe that's more of the soul that others find to be missing?  But I'd recommend this game still to survival horror fans as this is still a really solid entry for the genre.