The Sinking City 2 Difficulty Guide: Choose Your Settings
Compare the four difficulty levels, separate investigation settings, mid-game changes, and the best starting choice for your play style.
Quick answer
- Four main difficulty settings span from the easier Story mode to the demanding Survivor mode.
- Investigation difficulty can be adjusted separately from combat pressure.
- Easier play provides more recovery room; hard play raises enemy durability and ammunition cost.
- Post-launch feedback indicates that difficulty can be changed during an active playthrough.
Difficulty and Comfort Settings Overview
See the four-level difficulty range, separate investigation tuning, and the comfort options available before starting a run.
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What Difficulty Changes
The Sinking City 2 has four main difficulty settings, with Story at the forgiving end and Survivor at the demanding end. The choice changes how much survival pressure mistakes create. Easier play makes resources more accessible, while hard play gives enemies more health, increases the ammunition needed to defeat them, and can allow some enemies to return after defeat.
| Difficulty range | Expected pressure | Good starting point for |
|---|---|---|
| Story | The most forgiving resource and mistake margin | Following the story with lighter combat pressure |
| Middle range | Meaningful ammunition and health scarcity without starting at the maximum | A first survival-horror playthrough |
| Hard play | Tougher enemies, higher ammunition cost, and some returning threats | Experienced players who want stricter resource decisions |
| Survivor | The demanding endpoint of the four-setting range | Players deliberately seeking the highest survival pressure |
Release-build play on a middle setting still makes ammunition and health scarce enough that dodging an enemy can be the efficient choice. Moving away from Story therefore changes more than damage tolerance; it makes route planning, weak-point accuracy, and the decision to retreat matter more often.
Tune Investigation and Comfort Separately
Investigation difficulty can be changed separately, so you can keep combat demanding while making clue progression simpler. This is useful when you enjoy resource management but do not want a puzzle stall to interrupt the survival loop.
On PS5, the available comfort options include separate volume controls, 3D audio, basic subtitles, adjustable stick sensitivity, and play without rapid presses, motion controls, touch controls, vibration, or adaptive triggers. The broader settings overview also includes subtitle, audio-cue, HUD, and control adjustments.
Can You Change Difficulty Mid-Game?
Post-launch feedback indicates that the main difficulty can be changed during a playthrough. You can begin in the middle of the range, judge the ammunition and health pressure in a demanding area, and adjust if the run stops being useful or enjoyable.
Raise the setting when supplies feel abundant enough to remove meaningful decisions. Lower it when enemy durability turns every required encounter into a resource wall. Separate investigation tuning lets you solve a clue-progression problem without automatically reducing combat pressure.
Best Starting Settings by Player Type
| Player goal | Main difficulty choice | Investigation choice |
|---|---|---|
| Follow the story with lighter pressure | Story | Use the simpler investigation setting if clue progression is the priority. |
| Learn the survival systems for the first time | Start in the middle of the four-setting range | Keep the default first, then simplify it only if clues interrupt the pace. |
| Preserve strong resource pressure | Use the higher middle option before committing to Survivor | Set investigation difficulty independently according to puzzle preference. |
| Seek the maximum survival challenge | Survivor | Choose any investigation level, since it is adjusted separately. |
A useful starting setting should preserve decisions. You should care about ammunition, healing, and whether an encounter is worth fighting, while still having enough room to learn how shortcuts, storage, and enemy weak points work.