The Sinking City 2 Difficulty Settings: Combat and Investigation
How The Sinking City 2 splits difficulty into four combat modes and two investigation modes, which combinations work, and why no trophy forces a setting.
The Sinking City 2 picks difficulty on two independent tracks. Combat runs from Sweet Dreams to Sleep Demon, and investigation runs Breezy or Brainy. You choose one of each, so a hard combat run with a guided investigation is a normal setup rather than a compromise.
The four combat modes
| Mode | Track | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet Dreams | Easy combat | Story-first play, and the mode that carries the optional immortality and invulnerability assists. |
| Restless Slumber | Normal combat | A balanced first run with the standard survival-horror pressure. |
| Hard Night | Hard combat | Tougher fights and tighter resource pressure. |
| Sleep Demon | Very hard combat | Maximum enemy and supply pressure, meant for an experienced run. |
Raising the track does what survival-horror players expect: you die faster and enemies take more killing. A full review notes the combat track mostly matters on the first playthrough, for reasons set out below.
The two investigation modes
| Mode | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Breezy | Guided investigation. Highlights the important lines inside the clues and marks evidence that belongs together. |
| Brainy | Unassisted investigation. Removes those highlights, and related evidence icons look alike. |
The important boundary: Breezy and Brainy do not swap one puzzle for an easier version. They change how the clues are presented. Safe codes and physical puzzle answers are identical on both settings. Brainy does not hide an answer you need — it stops pointing at it.
One reviewer’s read is that Breezy mostly saves reading. The notes usually tell you what to do anyway, and the assist simply marks the lines that matter.
Which combination to pick
- Story and exploration first: Sweet Dreams plus Breezy, with the optional assists available if a fight blocks you.
- A first survival-horror run: Restless Slumber plus Breezy for readable evidence and honest combat.
- Detective work as the point: Restless Slumber plus Brainy. The clue work is the appeal, and nothing is hidden from you that you cannot read.
- Combat challenge without clue friction: Hard Night or Sleep Demon plus Breezy.
What difficulty does not change
- Trophies and achievements. No trophy requires a particular track, so the setting is a play-style choice rather than a completion requirement.
- Puzzle answers. Codes and solutions stay the same across investigation modes.
- The story and its branches. Dialogue and case outcomes are not gated behind a setting.
How New Game Plus interacts with difficulty
The mode you pick for a first run is not the last word. Completing in-game challenges earns points that buy rewards carried into a New Game Plus run. Those rewards are deliberately powerful: one reviewer notes that starting a later run with the grenade launcher can make even the maximum combat track easy. So if Sleep Demon feels out of reach now, the second run is where the balance swings back your way.
Sources
- Mortismal Gaming — The Sinking City 2 review after 100% (video, first-hand gameplay on the difficulty tracks, the investigation assists and New Game Plus)
- thesinkingcity2.net — difficulty settings: all combat and investigation modes (mode names, recommended combinations)
- NerdsChalk — The Sinking City 2: all difficulty modes explained (same six modes as two separate tracks)