Enjoying the game so far, playing on nightmare. I would say that the corner stealth kill skill is borderline broken. You barely have to break LoS for that thing to work.

I'm only a few hours in so far. I like the set-up and structure of the game as it encourages a lot of exploration. The story is B material and the voice acting is corny as hell, but it only serves to make it feel more like an old survival horror game, which I'm actually enjoying. At the very least, this game's story, so far, is actually coherent with characters that react to the things going on around them. Neither of those things could be said about the first Evil Within, so as far as I'm concerned, TEW2 already has quite a leg up on the original in terms of storytelling and acting.

I've also seen some very inventive scares and bizarre moments, too. The first game was kind of uninspired in its horror, and this one seems immediately aware of that and makes an effort to be more fresh.

However, the early game is fucking hard, and not necessarily in a fun way. The aiming is atrocious and very frustrating to manage. The first game didn't feel great, but it felt better than this and getting headshots wasn't nigh impossible if you were careful and patient. The aiming in 2 just feels way too loose and with how much the enemies move around, I seem to missing over half my shots. I've wasted entire handgun mags on a single zombie rushing me. And if a dude gets too close to you, even if your reticle is right on him, you will shoot past him and miss. Ugh.

The stealth is also barely functional. I know there are skills to increase movement speed while crouching, but holy shit, the default movement speed is unbelievably slow. I don't know how many times now I've thrown a bottle to distract a zombie, and before I can make it over to him from even only a few yards away, he's already turned around and noticed me.

The game does a great job at making you feel underpowered early on, which I enjoy conceptually. But it's also making the game incredibly frustrating since you need to kill guys and collect their brain boogers to become more efficient and powerful. I'm loving everything else, and I know playing the game will get easier in time.

I'm glad I wasn't alone with this, because holy shit, I was ready to delete the whole game from my PS4. Even with aim assist on I was having trouble with just a single enemy, let alone several. Plus the game doesn't seem to tell you (or I just missed a tutorial) that some of the zombies won't give a shit about being stabbed and then proceed to just destory you with few attacks. I'm glad if it does get easier, but I think I might also just change the difficulty to casual and have this be a relaxing horror game.

Also anyone who dislikes the new voices over the old ones...I mean, all the new performances are like from a bad b-movie or worse, but the actors from the first game sounded likey they weren't at all interested in what they were doing. I can understand if you'd like to hear familiar actors, but eh.

@glots: Yeah, I noticed the aiming in the Quick Look seemed pretty fucking brutal. Ben went into the shooting gallery for a second and his aim was one of the swimmiest I've ever seen in a game (not his lack of skill, but the way the reticle moves.) You mentioned switching to casual, but @halodude442 said on the last page that he finished it on casual and found it easy to the point where it had zero challenge at all.

@pompouspizza: Like I said in the previous post, I played it on casual. It's not hard, and throughout you won't find much challenge. It wasn't until late in the game where I found out I was lacking crafting material for ammo, but never once lost all of it for any specific weapon. I think it's fun if you just want a shooter, but if you want more tension, perhaps start on a harder setting. In the town area, I was finding the lack of tension a bit disappointing, but later on, when you're set on a more linear path and going through the story I was less disappointed. The game is far less scary, and to me, it feels less like a horror that's trying to spook you as the first did.

I don't want to spoil anything outright, but the story seems to be about facing and triumphing over Sebastian's fears, and at least on easy, that comes through really well. I think, at least in my opinion, it's perhaps worth checking out both difficulties. You'll definitely be sneaking more on hard, trying to silently kill enemies which is the biggest change I think. I ended up being satisfied with the casual playthrough, and I'll probably go through it again on a new game plus, but I might also try the hard mode too to see how it differs, but I can already imagine how it'll be. I should mention, in the near seventeen hours I played, I didn't die once other than when being caught twice in a moment that you're forced to sneak.

I think the game does really well at allowing you to play the way you want in terms of it being more tension, survival horror gameplay, or more in your face action. It's just up to you as to what you want to play. If you want a better time earlier in the game, I'd say play it on hard. I only say that because you don't know what you're expecting when you're playing on hard, but you're probably expecting some bad stuff, and it might make the game have more tension. On casual, I never really felt like I needed to stealth other than when it was necessary, so I was blasting through most of it.

I might be alright with that, seeing how I'm also playing Cuphead at the moment. Could use a nice contrast to that (though the challenge in Cuphead isn't really maddening)! We'll see.

So I binged it over the past 3 days (16 hours) and can say this game is a roller coaster of quality to me. There are parts I really enjoyed but I feel like as a whole I've come out of it quite disappointed.

I don't think the open areas were a necessary addition, they served little purpose outside of padding and they generally made the pacing and design suffer. I also feel like there was significantly more enemy types and design encounters in the first game as each area built was designed specifically for certain encounters rather than just open space with enemies plotted about willy nilly.

The plot is also atrocious in the second game, it does not earn what it attempts to do at all and by the end of the game it becomes quite tedious to pay attention to. It makes the game feel overly pedestrian in terms of horror elements compared to the first as well. The first game is so overly macabre and every where you looked the entire game was caked in filth, this game is way too clean and barely made use of the fact the it was based within STEM.

So overall I was disappointed and I don't want to play Sebastian ever again, give me an entire game where you play as Kidman. No more video game dads please and no more open levels.

@ivdamke: Damn. I really fucking hope this game sells well enough to warrant another sequel. I can see them hitting it out of the park if they get another crack at it. So, should I go back and play the first, then? I have never touched an Evil Within game but I was hoping TEW2 would be getting a bit better reception across the board than it is.

@inresurrection: The first is a flawed gem, it's very divisive and I'm definitely in the minority in how much I like it. It's a hard one to recommend without knowing the person you're recommending it to.

The second one is getting a lot more positive reception but personally I question whether the people that are giving it positive reception are looking for a survival horror game, or whether they even paid much attention when they played the first at all.

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/59dxk8/the-evil-within-2-makes-you-forget-the-original-sucked

The Evil Within 2 looks like the same game: You're spending a lot of time in a crouched position, waiting to stab enemies in the head with your knife. What's different is The Evil Within 2 is much more forgiving and playful. The interface now tells you how alert enemies are to your presence, it's possible to run away and try a sequence again without loading an old save, and there's plenty of ammunition. It's a game about creativity, rather than scarcity.

...

Don't bother looking up the plot to The Evil Within, by the way. It didn't make sense when I originally played, and while I've heard the DLC filled in some of the gaps, it's schlocky nonsense that takes itself way too seriously.

@ivdamke: I kind of agree with some of that, though not to a degree that it ruins the experience or made me feel disappointed overall. I also liked the story. I felt the Union town areas were a bit boring compared to the more linear, pushing you forward in the story focused latter part of the game. That said, I think the side content there is significant. It does good with a small list of side missions for the most part, where it feels more vital than normal side missions. Union was a little less interesting than the first STEM because you're not linearly being pushed through a path into one different place to another, which also means it wouldn't make as much sense unfortunately for different enemy types. I liked in the first game that in the model viewer, it would describe what each enemy meant for a characters' psyche. In two, that's lacking.

I think it earns what it does in the end, and it surprised me that it even went that way, but the execution wasn't perfect. It was just slightly overdramatic with prolonged dialogue in spots, kind of anime-ish. It almost reminded me of MGS, when it seemed like it was trying to be The Last of Us if you will. I liked it nonetheless. Maybe it's just because The Evil Within on the casual difficulty setting was harder, but the first is definitely tenser. I plan on playing two on hard to see how it compares. The first, being more linear, they often would throw you into moments of claustrophobic areas where you had to escape, while in two, that's not really there. I think to play on hard, it's probably a 'survival horror', but one like the first, not so much.

By the end of two, I was hooked and invested in Sebastian's journey, I just wish some of the dialogue and voice work was done a little better. And... To be honest, while it's a lot of the game, most of the time spent on Stefano was the worst part of the game. There's a clear change in how the game goes after that.

Well, on the bright side you can gauge how well Patrick's memories of that game match up with his review of the time right here on the site. I'd probably argue he paid attention when playing it since that's a fairly lengthy review and he talked about it a lot on the morning show at the time.

@vierastalo: That review makes it pretty evident he didn't pay attention to the story of the first at all.

Jesus fucking christ! Have I seriously missed some tutorial in this game or a weapons cache with machine guns? The game's kicking my fucking ass even after I changed the difficulty to casual and had the aim assist on. If I even see one of those zombies with a knife, I feel like I'm already dead. I can shoot them seven times with a handgun and then four times with a shotgun, which is maybe enough to split their head apart before they kill me. It's making me laugh out loud by this point, because of how absurdly hard the game feels when I'm not even out of the first area.

Fuck, I if I could refund a physical console game, I would've.

@glots:I dunno what to say dude, the standard zombies took 3-4 shots at most to the head most of the time 2 shots on Nightmare and for the white knife ladies you can sneak up on them, stab them in the head then quickly sprint away break line of sight and they lose you again giving immediate sneak opportunities.

I will also mirror what @adequatelypreparedsaid, ambush is very broken for reasons seen below:

Not really a spoiler, but it may be an area some people deem it so even though there's nothing unique about it.

Few hours later, I've managed a little better. It's kinda like playing a poor man's TLOU, except that the game doesn't really give you any warnings about the white knife ladies being way more dangerous than your standard zombies (which wouldn't be that dangerous either if you wouldn't also have to battle against the aiming). I guess I gotta use the whole running away and hiding method more frequently. I also remembered that the game did come with a DLC and all the stuff in it seemed like it definitely would've made my life easier, but I only redeemed it now and would have to start the whole game again to be able to use all that stuff, so nope.

I suppose I'm just reacting way more harshly to this, when the whole year has been full of games that felt wonderful from the very start, while this kinda slapped me right in the face and not in a good way. But maybe my blood pressure's steadily lowering for now.

@glots: Poor mans TLOU is pretty damning for me as I was always of the mind that TLOU was a great story and a mediocre game with some real poor stealth mechanics. If this survival game is not even “barely competent” in stealth like Last of Us then that’s rough.

I was skeptical of having the game be more open rather than linear. I'm quite enjoying it though... more than the first but I'm only a couple hours in. I'd say it's more Dead Rising/TLOU with some the quirkiness of the first game. Reviewers complain about the voice acting and stuff but I think that just adds to the b-movie kind of quality. Only complaint so far is how damn slow the crouch speed is. I saw it's an upgrade so that's the first thing I'm going to get. Hopefully he moves much faster. Also I wish it had the cheater vision of TLOU to see where enemies are. But that was a bit silly I suppose.

Finally finished it, there were some cool moments (my favourite part was probably the callback/boss rush from the first game, which is telling) but I enjoyed this game a lot less than the original. It could be the reduced difficulty (played on "Survival" and it was pretty easy) or the open world filler stuff but I didnt really find this game scary or even really that intense. I thought the clinic in the first game (your "room" equivalent) was creepier than most the stuff in this game and the mansion section while frustrating was nerve wracking. There wasnt anything like that in the sequel. Also where's Ruvik/Leslie?!

@boozak: Yeah, I really liked that part too. And yeah, him not being in it can be considered weird considering what had happened at the end of the first game, but he didn't necessarily have to be a part of it. Maybe in a sequel? That said, what had happened at the end of this game was his entire goal of the first one, so there's almost no point.

I'm like 3 hours in, enjoying the more sandboxy approach thus far, though I do feel like some of the first game's focus has been lost. Say what I will about The Evil Within's garbage trial-and-error sequences and dubious technical performance on consoles, it had a pretty clear identity (a modern take on "survival horror" with a high emphasis on grindhouse aesthetics and trippy situations) that I feel like this sequel flattens a little bit in the name of being less frustrating to play.

I'll see how that opinion holds up after playing more, obviously, but as someone who liked that first game more than I hated it, I'm not really buying into the claims of it being a down-the-line improvement over the original thus far. TEW 2 seems good, don't get me wrong, but it also seems less unique.

So if i were to chose between this and resident evil 7 in the future what would you all recommend? I am thinking of getting back into horror games.

@oursin_360: If you're looking for a longer campaign, The Evil Within 2. RE7 can be beaten in under four hours, but for a normal playthrough it's about nine hours. The Evil Within is anywhere from fifteen to twenty. That said, I think RE7 is a little better. Plus, I think RE7 is far tenser an experience, so if you want to be scared, that's the one to play. If you like playing the game more than once, both are good for that. Right now, I'm going to start The Evil Within 2 on Nightmare, and I was coming on to ask who else is playing on that difficulty. It depends on what you're looking for in a game. If you're really wanting to get into horror again, why not both? Also, I thought Outlast 2 was good, but if you want a more action approach, that's not what you're looking for.

@ntm: Can't afford both lol, when i get one or the other it will be at a discount. I may get TeW1 next steam sale and see what that's about, kinda got spoiled on it though after watching coverage of the second one.

@oursin_360: As someone who liked RE7 but didn't think it was a massive return to form I would still recommend RE7 over TEW2. It's generally a more polished and consistent experience, it's also more aware of how important its narrative is within its genre and plays around that a lot better. I found RE7 to be forgettable in the end but I didn't tire of it midway through playing it like I did TEW2.

I will say that the gameplay in RE7 is less interesting than TEW2 as it has serious variety issues and offers 0 challenge but it's not as janky.

This game is really good haven't finished it yet but I still feel combat isn't as satisfy as RE4 and enemies are kinda of generic the bosses have great design and the psychological horror moments are excellent. The graphics are a mixed bag interiors and some characters models look great but others look last gen I really wish this game used Id tech 6 or even unreal engine 4. I feel the series can be really something special but it's still not quite there yet.

@oursin_360 In what way do you mean spoiled? To be honest, the first game may take more than one playthrough to even understand fully what's going on. Or, you just have to read everything in the model viewer alongside really paying attention to the story. It's not entirely original, but it's interesting nonetheless and is still complex, or at least vague. The games DLC does a lot to help it too. Plus, watching anything on the second game doesn't give you a lot of detail about the first. If you're meaning spoiled by saying that the second just looks better, I don't know if that's a good enough reason to skip one (and you might like the first more anyways). Plus, there's at least one good part in two that's a nice moment if you've played the first. I find it hard to recommend because if I were you, I'd be into both, but since that's not the case, maybe RE7 (first). I also don't know exactly what you want in a horror game.

Check out the first game if you can. It's good that it's the Steam version since that's arguably the best one I guess. I heard they fixed technical issues in it, and you have the option to change FOV unlike the console versions if you'd like, as well as 60fps. I'm playing two on Nightmare now, and it's slightly different. I had to go to work, so I only played the beginning, but I already noticed that there are more enemies. On casual, you only kill one enemy in the beginning, but on Nightmare, I was surprised to take down the one enemy, and then turn around and see/hear another trying to break down the front door of the house I was in. That said, that's not as interesting as RE7's change on different difficulties. I mean, maybe it's only one thing, but there's a part where you have to get in a car and run down a guy; while that works on easy, on hard, he'll tear you out of the car and try to run you over.

Just finished it and loved every bit of it. I especially liked the Dark Souls boss finale.

Playing on Nightmare. I put a few hours in and compared to my time with it on casual, I haven't made much progress. I died three times. The game is way tenser than on casual (I know, that's stating the obvious probably), and the immersion is better. The enemies don't make me want to run in their face nor hardly stand my ground. When they spot me, I'm booking it and then turning around to wait for them, perhaps ducking and lining my shots up to either their legs or face if they're still coming after me, otherwise, I'll try to go back and stealth kill them. And yeah, I walked into the auto shop area where you first meet the woman with the knife, and she has a lot of health. It's like she's a mini-boss or something. I killed her though since I just moved on from her and got the explosive bolts and then axed her.

If you stun her or shoot her with a pistol, she just charges after you. It's intense. I'm ducking way more too now. The only thing that frustrates me is that (and maybe it's because I am super tired right now and going to bed because of it right after I type this), I can't figure out the B-34 door code. I totally forgot about it on my first playthrough, where I remember thinking I'd go back to it later. The card has a grid of numbers, but I can't make out how it works... To me, it's much better on hard so far. It feels like it's the way it's meant to be experienced and I am not having an issue with the open area as much since it's not just a back and forth breezy experience. It forces you to look around. I just upgraded my aiming all the way so he is as steady as can be. That should help for when I need to make shots count quickly. The game I can tell will last several hours longer than my first playthrough.

@ntm: Well out of context of working knowledge of the game they don't make 100% sense but like i know some lady is a double agent, i know the whole thing is some sorta mind world created by some umbrella type thing, and some other stuff that i have forgotten that i probably would remember playing lol. so i'm not 100% sure how spoilery that stuff is but it seems like it's pretty big reveals of the game

just recently beat the game on whatever the middle difficulty is on pc, and its pretty good, the game did freeze on me about 15 times which caused me to have to reset my PC which was very annoying. there is a fair bit of challenge to the game but i feel a lot of it comes from bad aiming controls, although there is an ability you can get that trivializes the game completely. all in all i had a fun time with it, don't know if i'll replay it again though.

Also when you beat the game you unlock a fourth difficulty that sounds like the most un-fun thing i could spend my time doing in a game.

@oursin_360: Only the first part is a spoiler, the rest is all upfront, it is a reveal in the first game though.

Wrapped it up a few hours ago.

It was technically better than the garbage fire that was the first game, I'll give it that! The plot was coherent, but below medicore and absolutely nothing to write home about. I'm not saying that Ruvik was a memorable villain, but the replacements were kinda rubbish. The camera guy was almost decent, but still plenty cliched. Father Theodore was the worst one. Some religious nut jumping in out of nowhere when you're half-way through the game, only to finally get stabbed to death by Myra. She was probably the best one, if only because of the visual design and that her voice actor actually sounded like she (somewhat) gave a shit about her performance. The evil Mobius boss and his MIB hencemen were the most laughable shit ever, though almost in a so-bad-it's-good way, especially in the final shoot-out where those guys are pouring in like Agent Smith clones from the Matrix.

The gameplay was pretty messy. I guess most people didn't have as much problems as I did, but I found the aiming to be pretty terrible all the way to the end. Nothing better than trying to shoot a zombie-thing with a shotgun from half-a-meter away and somehow missing three times, even when you're 99% sure that at least one of those shots was aimed right at their head. Also some enemies seemingly being immune to your attacks as they're waking up and getting up from the floor was always a fun surprise with your ammunition being low.

The game wasn't maybe as visually diverse as the first one, but it did at least look pretty good graphically. The camera bits were especially neat and I liked the yoghurt zone in the end. Ran fine on PS4, though like stated elsewhere, the lack of Pro support for big releases continues to be a disappointment. Encountered a handful of bugs too and the camera would at times go all sorts of crazy when I climbed on a car and tried to hop down quickly after.

So...better than the first game, but still lacking. Maybe third time's the charm? Assuming that this one sells and won't be forgotten in a month...at least it was released two weeks before the week.

@oursin_360: Like said, only one thing is a spoiler. That said, the first game is complex enough that it doesn't really matter. You'd play through the first game and probably not know exactly what the heck is really going on still, and then it'll be clearer with the DLC if you choose to play that.

@glots: Father Theodore was actually in a couple of the trailers (which I had totally forgotten about by that point in the game), and he is hinted at several times before you get there. I'm also not quite sure what issue you had with the aiming, especially if you had upgraded it in the combat. I don't play with auto-aim on, and I still have little issue. I also think it's great that it is literally no auto-aim because making shots count really matters. I've missed a good amount of shots when trying to aim for the legs, but it was my doing. The thing about playing on hard is taking it slow, and taking time to line up the shots. If you're expecting to aim and shoot immediately, that's not going to happen unless you have a shotgun and are really close to an enemy (so again I don't know how you had an issue).

Something else, for those that had finished it, I'm curious as to how many got all the slides. It reveals that your old partner Joseph is still alive. And yeah, enemies are resilient on Nightmare, most of all the woman with the knife that charges you (at least as far as I am right now). It's just about strategically going about the situation, and I really like it. On casual, you just blast your way through it all. I agree about the so bad it's good aspect, but to me, the 'so bad' comes from the anime-ish-like aspect of it. I said it before, but I wish the dialogue and voice acting was at least a little better. What's there could be more effective if those two things were tweaked some.

Hey, everyone, I don't know how many of you are still playing this game, but I just went back to playing it, and I found a pretty interesting thing. I am on Nightmare right now, just before entering the marrow, so I did everything in the first open area. The location with the computer that transfers you to the marrow, when I ran outside to the right and the back of the building a big ass crow was standing there. I thought it was a glitch, but I killed it and got 20000 green gel. If anyone is curious, as clarification, it's to the right and behind the northernmost safe house in the Residential Area. I don't have any clue as to how I activated it though. I was running away from one of the knife ladies and then came upon it.

So far this is my game of the year easily I love psychological horror and this game delivered it's so much better then the first game. The second half is really strong looking forward to replaying this on new game plus sometime.

How generous is the lock on aiming?

Well I finally finished it. I think this game has my favourite finale of any game I have played recently. Maybe since Metal Gear Rising. I found everything about the last environment to be pretty striking.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot. I think it has some good callbacks to the original game and I was very excited to see one thing mentioned (JOSEPH! ) that I hope is explored in a DLC. I found myself actually being reasonably invested in the story and the universe by the end of this game. I think in the end my game complete time was around 20 hours or so because I did everything and looked everywhere. Yet still found less than half the locker keys!

@paulmako: Yeah, same. I'm not sure there are that many keys in the game though, it probably takes more playthroughs to unlock them all. I found the first top or bottom row, and then half of the second row. I got to the second open town area where you destroy the three paintings on Nightmare, but I think for now I'm done playing the game. Do you plan on going through it again?

Had this happen to me today. The Predator skill continues to be awesome, lol.

Sebastian sounds impressively awfull to me, and I like a lot of games with presumably 'bad' voice acting. The way silent hill 2-4 were badly voice acted, for example, really added to everything feeling off imo. Someone sounding like they're very much acting/preforming a play takes me out of a game waaaaaay quicker than someone sounding maybe bored(although theres a limit there too).

Every time sebastian opens his mouth in TEW2 im just bothered by it to no end. The others aren't as completely awfull but still bad enough to bother me. Its not just the voices either though.....I dunno, I feel like the voice actors were maybe also directed very badly. I wonder if the VO director for this game was different than the previous.

Im usually very good at ignoring aspects of things I dont like after awknowleging what they are but I just can't seem to manage it here haha.

I personally dont think anyone in TEW 1 sounded bad at all either and I couldnt give less of a shit who's a famous actor or not, havent watched tv in maybe 8 years now.

I also didnt even recognize kidman untill Sebastian said her name, its like shes a different person in this game.

And as the cherry on top, the controls do not feel good to me either. I could get used to them though. Its not necessarily bad.

Sorry about the rant but I just haven't been able to get into this game because of my stupid hang ups with it. It seems like it could be really neat if I could somehow manage to ignore said hang ups. TEW1 is one of my favorite games of the year it came out in.

(edit: holy shit! I maybe should just switch to another spoken language)

I've been dabbling for about 30mins a night in both games just out of direct curiosity to see how well my memory fairs in regards to comparing the 2 games. So far I stand by my words in that the first is a dramatically better game, it sets tone so much better and introduces itself in a far snappier and more effective way. Replaying through the intro of the second only makes me disappointed that the game doesn't do anything interesting with the camera time bubbles. I will say though that the Brass Knuckles you get for completing the second game are flat out broken on NG+ they basically allow for a no gun run.

Finished the game earlier in the week and it got me wanting to replay the first one. I previously played through it multiple times on pc, this time I'm going through on a ps4 pro. After the patches and being on a pro, the game runs fine aside from a handful of parts.

I think the sequel has a better story, especially the ending sequences, and characters (Torres is best girl). I also preferred the hub-worlds, weapon variety, more balanced difficulty, abilities and upgrades of the sequel.

The voice acting of Sebastian was better in the original though. I also miss the more action focused, RE4-style gameplay of the first as the second game has more of a slower paced, stealth feel to it.

Movement speed in the first game was also faster (no slow jaunt constantly being forced upon you) and the camera wasn't crammed in so close. I hope we get an fov slider in a patch on consoles.

Additionally camera speed in the second game is too slow and there needs to be a separate slider for aiming sensitivity. It sucks that a sequel has worse feeling camera controls than the original game.

All in all, I like both roughly the same but for different reasons and hope they make some dlc for this one.

Just finished getting all the trophies for the game and really enjoyed my time with it. Clocked in about 21 hours for a nightmare clear and 8 for classic so it's also a pretty decent length for this type of game. For nightmare it was pretty fun trying to conserve ammo while also trying to decide if it was worth killing something for the green gel. I also like how they broke up the game into open world sections and more linear sections. They seemed to hit a good mix between the two.

The classic mode run played almost completely differently from nightmare. With no character or weapon upgrades, you have to leave a lot enemies up because you just don't have the means to take them down. It made going through the open world sections way more stressful trying to crawl your way to the objectives, rather than strolling around town gathering stuff after picking off all the enemies. Also, 7 saves for a 7-8 hour game turns the stress level way up when you haven't saved in a while.

Having enjoyed both Evil Withins, I think I can at least say that the gameplay in this is a lot more fun than in the first one. As long as you don't try to use the handgun at close range. No, seriously; never, ever use the handgun at close range and you'll be fine.

What's with Horror games changing up the environmental formula? The best sections of this game are in small, confined arenas. The clunkiness and limited stamina makes it very strenuous to avoid a multitude of enemies. It kills a good chunk of the dread that comes with seeing a powerful enemy in the distance. the "oh fuck!" turns into "ugh, not again."

Which is a shame, because the rest the game is a lot smoother and excellently designed. I'm glad they are taking risks, but the environment should really be designed around gameplay.

@theacidskull: I think it's pretty funny that most of the complaints in this thread can be 'fixed' by unlocking upgrades. It's a design choice for sure. I'm 7 hours in right now and I'm halfway through most skill trees. I already feel a lot more powerful: +150% Weapons damage, increased stealth, increased stamina meter and regen. Walking is normally slow, but with the upgrade of increased walk speed while aiming it goes pretty fast. Upgrades are meaningful and powerful in this game, but I have a feeling this game will get a lot harder just around the next chapter.

@seroth: Ha!, that's great. This game is super janky, but I love it to death.

Really enjoying The Evil Within 2. I liked the first game, despite it's many flaws, and so far the sequel is a massive improvement over the first game in almost every way. Playing through it on the PC on the Survival difficulty and my only gripe so far is I can't play it as much as I'd like, because I only play it at night. 2017 continues to be an outstanding year for games.

Yes! I dont know if sebastian sounded worse at the start or if im getting used to it but, woohoo, I dont find it as jarring anymore. What maybe also helped was turning the voices down to 35 or something, wtf is up with them being so loud in the mix, sounds really weird.

But I dont want to overstate that stuff, I'm actually enjoying it a lot now.

[Mikami: Hey I heard you guys dont like black bars limiting your view. Well, hope you dont mind this extremely limiting fov, enjoy! :D]

I must say, I'm a big fan of the vomiting mechanic. Not since the indubious masterpiece that is The Thing: The Motion Picture: The Video Game have I witnessed this underrated game mechanic in action.

/!\ NSFW /!\...SFW?

It's not that necessarily. I'm not saying the open world is a crutch you can't get around, but by far the best sections of the game happen in small, tight spaces. Whenever a monster appears in such situations, I always become anxious and nervous. Whereas the open world, especially for the amount of time you spend time in it, seems like a chore you know?

The upgrades do help, but aesthetically it keeps it from reaching it's full potential, IMO at least.

I just finished the game today and would fully recommended it to people if they haven't picked it up yet. It builds upon the first game and I thought the open world areas added a nice amount of exploration with side missions that kept things interesting for those looking for additional content outside of the main story. My final completion time was around 24 hours but I tend to clear areas quiet thoroughly and also did all the side content I could including the shooting gallery (somehow managed to get to 100,000 on the combo game!)

For those who have completed the game, I share the love for the 'return to Beacon' aspects of the game, especially the boss rush style confrontation with Theodore. I loved the visual transitions that pulled Sebastian from one location to another with great visual flair - they reminded me alot of the ones found in the Dead Space series where they also get a similarly positive reaction from me.