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They really had to add microtransactions to a story based survival horror game huh...
This game is very fun, it improves a lot on the first game. However even if it does have many positive aspects it also has lots of bad ones, mainly this game is full of glitches and lazy half baked features. Enemies hit you across large areas and even literal walls with phantom range, many collision glitches, visual bugs. The player shadow is not even accurate and is just a bald naked model.
On paper the game should be fun and challenging, but the execution is just horrible sometimes. If I could add a mixed review I would, but since this game seems to not really get any more bug fixes, I assume they are just going to keep pushing more new games instead of polishing the existing ones. So if you want to play this game for the story as a continuation of the previous one, and it's on sale absolutely do get it, otherwise probably just buy the most recent one in the series.
Speaking of the story, I personally think it's alright if you don't think about it too much. The side quests have interesting choices tied to them. Even if your choices don't always impact the game a lot, they still feel impactful and challenging to Aiden's (the MC) motivations. Like for example he will find a random guy who has similar goal to him, to find a kid he cares about, but because he acts in a way that is too machievellian and not in the interest of the greater good, you can decide to fight and kill him. However the actual lore is very bad and many plot holes are left after they tried to rewrite it. You're probably better off just creating your own theories and fill the gaps with imagination.
The combat is just like the first game but more balanced and just as fast and tense. My third and final main complaint is that the melee weapons still feel like plastic toys against higher level enemies while parkour attacks such as dropkick, grapple and stomp, and consumables especially throwing knives can trivialize most encounters. I think they should just make weapons hit a lot harder while also reducing their durability, because the amount of loot you get even on Nightmare difficulty is very high. You're often better off just recycling weapons for parts even the legendary ones just to get blades to craft shurikens because they actually do damage. Melee feels more like what you use against occasional slow high HP targets to make use of the elemental DOT effects and trash low level enemies if you actually have a lot of endurance and HP to risk getting close to them, or against enemies that dodge throwing knives like humans if you can't afford ranged weapons.
