7.5/10
The Evil Within 2 released 3 years after the first one. It changes a lot of things that I liked about the first game (I rated it 6.5/10), it doesn't feel as scary as the first game by a huge mile. There are a couple big areas, not open world, with some side content that'll give you amno, weapons and lore stuff. It's nice there's more stuff for you to do, but those areas aren't scary in the slightest. The rest of the game isn't very scary too, unfortunately. Although I'm not a huge fan of the first game there was always tension in the air and it was scary quite a couple of times. I played this in the Normal difficulty mode and it actually felt too easy sometimes. TEW1 had random difficulty spikes (I also played it in Normal) so I'm glad this was adressed here. Hard is what they recommend for people who played through the first game so yeah they're literally adressing the difficulty of the first game there lol. The gameplay has some very good improvements over its predecessor, you can now store and use bottles when you want, not only when you're holding it in your hand and you'd have to either use it or drop it. The stealth got a nice improvement too and you now can stealth through lots of parts, even though it gets too op with some upgrades. The enemy designs are quite good for the most part, some enemies feel very generic. There's good weapon variety! There are lots of upgrades for them so that's nice too. You can now craft amno for all your weapons, syringes and medic kits, that's also a cool improvement. The "hub" where you do your upgrades isn't also as good as it was in the first game, I was a bit disappointed in that. The story was okay, I liked Stefano way more than Theodore, his interactions with were interesting, Theodore's weren't bad, but meh. I couldn't get atached to most of the characters that were introduced so I didn't care a lot when certain moments happened. There are some weird decisions involving some character's writing which bugged me out. The level design is fine, there are some cool sections which I really liked, but the open areas and most of the linear ones, were okay. I liked the environments and the setting of the first game over this one. Graphically it looks very nice, there's some very visually interesting parts. For some reason they changed Sebastian and Kidman's voice actors, I didn't mind the new voices but I wasn't huge on them too. The optimization on PC is good unlike the first game, it would randomly crash, sometimes even in the middle of cutscenes!
I think game tries to tackle many new stuff together and it falls short in some things. If it was a bit more linear and scary I'd have liked this way more. Maybe when I replay it I'll like it more. If TEW3 ever gets announced I'll replay both games.
Overall, I think the game is fun, there are some interesting sections, visually interesting set pieces, an ok story and some underwhelming aspects like the setting and tone of the story.
The Evil Within 2 released 3 years after the first one. It changes a lot of things that I liked about the first game (I rated it 6.5/10), it doesn't feel as scary as the first game by a huge mile. There are a couple big areas, not open world, with some side content that'll give you amno, weapons and lore stuff. It's nice there's more stuff for you to do, but those areas aren't scary in the slightest. The rest of the game isn't very scary too, unfortunately. Although I'm not a huge fan of the first game there was always tension in the air and it was scary quite a couple of times. I played this in the Normal difficulty mode and it actually felt too easy sometimes. TEW1 had random difficulty spikes (I also played it in Normal) so I'm glad this was adressed here. Hard is what they recommend for people who played through the first game so yeah they're literally adressing the difficulty of the first game there lol. The gameplay has some very good improvements over its predecessor, you can now store and use bottles when you want, not only when you're holding it in your hand and you'd have to either use it or drop it. The stealth got a nice improvement too and you now can stealth through lots of parts, even though it gets too op with some upgrades. The enemy designs are quite good for the most part, some enemies feel very generic. There's good weapon variety! There are lots of upgrades for them so that's nice too. You can now craft amno for all your weapons, syringes and medic kits, that's also a cool improvement. The "hub" where you do your upgrades isn't also as good as it was in the first game, I was a bit disappointed in that. The story was okay, I liked Stefano way more than Theodore, his interactions with were interesting, Theodore's weren't bad, but meh. I couldn't get atached to most of the characters that were introduced so I didn't care a lot when certain moments happened. There are some weird decisions involving some character's writing which bugged me out. The level design is fine, there are some cool sections which I really liked, but the open areas and most of the linear ones, were okay. I liked the environments and the setting of the first game over this one. Graphically it looks very nice, there's some very visually interesting parts. For some reason they changed Sebastian and Kidman's voice actors, I didn't mind the new voices but I wasn't huge on them too. The optimization on PC is good unlike the first game, it would randomly crash, sometimes even in the middle of cutscenes!
I think game tries to tackle many new stuff together and it falls short in some things. If it was a bit more linear and scary I'd have liked this way more. Maybe when I replay it I'll like it more. If TEW3 ever gets announced I'll replay both games.
Overall, I think the game is fun, there are some interesting sections, visually interesting set pieces, an ok story and some underwhelming aspects like the setting and tone of the story.