The Sinking City 2 launched Tuesday to a strong critical reception, Metacritic scores between 75 and 84 across platforms, along with “Very Positive” user reviews on Steam. Critics have specifically called out the tighter, more focused approach compared to the original game’s sprawling open world as a meaningful improvement.
Console players get two performance modes to choose from: a 30fps Quality mode and a 60fps Performance mode. PC players should expect the game to run well across most modern hardware.
If you’re playing on a Steam Deck or a lower-end laptop, though, it’s worth knowing where to look first. Like most recent releases, The Sinking City 2 is built on Unreal Engine 5, and two specific settings account for most of the engine’s performance cost: Lumen, the dynamic lighting system, and Nanite, the geometry detail system. Dropping Lumen to its lower preset and letting Nanite fall back to standard level-of-detail meshes recovers a meaningful chunk of frame rate for a relatively small visual tradeoff.
Pair that with FSR or DLSS upscaling set to Balanced or Quality rather than running at native resolution, and most UE5 titles reach a stable frame rate without needing to max out every setting. This isn’t specific to this one game either, it’s a good default approach for any UE5 release going forward.
