Good lord talk about a complete 180, this game is leaps and bounds better than the original in pretty much every conceivable way possible. I definitely wasn’t expecting this.

The gameplay is so much more tightly focused and polished compared to the first game, Sebastian feels good to control, shooting feels good, stealth actually feels integral to the experience instead of something that’s tacked on as an afterthough, there’s way more weapon variety and bottles actually have utility as opposed to just being distraction fodder, it honestly almost feels a little bit like a precursor to the REmakes in a way. The upgrade system has been completely overhauled, offering way more interesting upgrade paths that give you actual perks and abilities to play with as opposed to just making a number go up slightly. Early on in the game it takes on a more open ended experience where you explore part of the town to locate your next objective which is an interesting change of pace (it does get a lot more linear later on). I ended up getting sidetracked looking for all the different things I could find because I ended up WANTING to explore, the game was just that well made. The visuals are on another level entirely compared to the first game, seriously it’s like, night and day, not just technically but aesthetically as well, so many locations actually feel creepy and are visually way more creative and interesting. I even really liked the story, the characters here are like…actual characters, the story is more tied to Sebastian as a character and his relationships to his family making the story as a whole a lot more personal and as a result, more engaging. It focuses more on what happened to his daughter, a story element that was just sort of brushed to the sidelines and made into flavor text you could potentially miss in the first game. The game as a whole was noticeably easier (I only died like 8 times as opposed to the 120 deaths I had in the first game) but I’m very willing to chalk that up to the game being way better designed as a whole, nothing in this game was overtly frustrating. Admittedly it’s still not particularly scary as a horror game, but it is very creepy in many areas. Many of the “hide and sneak around evil entity” elements are done so much better in this game than in the first, if the first had any at all, you like, never had to hide lol. There’s even some cool goofy things in this game that give it a lot of charm, you have health restoration stations that you get by drinking coffee, there’s a neat RE4 style shooting gallery, you even find cute little trinkets around the game that act as easter eggs for other Bethesda games, I just feel there was so much more effort and love put into this game, you can definitely tell the developers knew what they were doing this time around and were having a lot of fun doing so.

Definitely recommend giving this a shot. Since it does tie into the first game, playing the first is kind of a necessary evil (pardon the pun), but you have one hell of a sequel to look forward to afterwards.