The Evil Within 2

I wish steam had a "mixed" option for reviews because all in all the story of this game is great, pacing is a little off but otherwise its enjoyable. TLDR: The story was great, but the gameplay was mediocre compared to the first one. More in depth: Probably a hot take but, most everything else about this game is worse in comparison to the first one. I played them both back to back, with the second game being played on nightmare. The open world aspect of the game were a downgrade, it made the game too easy. I could just run away from enemies and wait for the AI to lose sight of me. IMO it should have stayed linear, not every game needs to be open world, especially a horror game. Stealth was upgraded in your ability to sneak and takedown enemies in comparison to the first game, and yet its made worse due to the fact that the AI for detecting you in stealth is absolute garbage. You can lose an enemy by sneaking behind a waist high box and they'll never find you. It may have been because I was playing on nightmare but my weapons don't feel quite as powerful as the first game, even with some of them being fully upgraded. For example my shotgun in the first game could knock a few enemies to the ground to give me a little breathing room, in this one it struggles perform the same. The enemies are more spastic in their movements but I'm quite okay with that only because the game was open world, it would have been beyond frustrating if it was linear and the enemies moved like that. The characters were a mixed bag for me, not gonna say names in case somebody reads this and hasn't played it yet. Some of the characters I really liked, some of them I really hated entirely because of their dialogue, which could be great or bad depending on the character. The villains of the game were ranged from good to forgettable but still paled in comparison to the first game's villain. I wasn't a fan of how they give constant exposition on what's going on, I don't believe everything needs to explain to the player constantly all the time. I also miss the match mechanic from the first game, with the first game I had to be guessing whether or not I wanted to use some of my matches to burn a body that *might* be a zombie for some peace of mind, or if I should just risk it getting back up and attacking me when I turn my back. In this game they still try to do the "Is it dead is it not" trick but 10 times out of 10 if it looks like one of the lost and its lying down, its still alive. Meanwhile if the "corpse" looked like a normal untransformed person, 10 times out of 10 they were actually dead. I don't believe this game deserves a positive review, but it also doesn't deserve a negative one, unfortunately because there is no "mixed review" option, I've chosen to lean into the negative. The game could've been better, still worth it if you enjoyed the first games story, or have never played the first one to compare.