This game is actually good, but it has some flaws, some big flaws.
I'll start with the best aspect of The Evil Within, its atmosphere. It's generally dark, dirty, bloody, helpless and maddening, and for a psychological horror story? That's more than perfect, it's perfect². The graphics and general art design are top notch despite this being a game from 2014. This only applies to the first ten chapters though, because the last six are... different. They focus way too much on action, losing the horror in the process aside from a few minor parts. That's the first flaw, 65% of the game are horror oriented with sprinkles of action, and 35% are pure Hollywoodian action.
Now for the gameplay. It's rough and kinda clunky, camera movement included. Sebastian is weird to control, and that's because the controls are clunky, that's a fact, the camera is all over the place and some scenarios are too small. Those are already kinda bad, but on specific scenarios, they can get straight up frustrating.
Level design. That's the part where i had most problems with. Just to list a few, you got:
1 - A certain boss, Laura, who is almost immortal, can OHK you, is fast af and only takes considerable damage from enviroment traps.
2 - One section which contain invisible enemies who are a pain to spot.
3 - Another boss whom respawn after death and you have to fight against in a room full of poisonous gas, where you objective is to rotate valves to turn off the gas so you can escape.
4 - Boring swimming sections at the end.
5 - The mansion where you have a stalker who can appears out of nowhere, teleport, is immortal and can OHK you. This one was painful.
6 - Explosive traps placed on spots impossible to see, specifically the one in a certain blade room.
7 - The "Saw section", where you have a few small rooms full of traps and a few enemies, some of the traps are troll and can kill you the first time you walk near them.
8 - A part where you have to run from a spike trap and you can't see the traps in front of the character and the controls are against you.
9 - The wolf fight, all of it.
10 - Laura appears again and her second boss fight is actually worse than the first one it's way longer and you more convoluted.
11 - Forced walking sections.
12 - Chapter 1 and how slow it is.
There's more, but i can't type forever. My first playthrough was on normal and i almost quit a few times, my second one was on easy and i actually had a good time. So if you plan on playing this game, i'd recommend for you to start on the casual difficult, it makes a lot of the BS tolerable.
Performance. It's okay, mostly. This is an old game running on an old engine, so compatibility and performance issues in newer systems can occur, be aware.
The story and characters. I won't spoil anything here, but this story is meh and the characters are bleh, except for Sebastian, Tatiana and Ruvik, the rest are actually very forgettable.
The story may seem interesting, but that's because it's weird and mysterious, once you understand what's actually happening, it gets meh since this is a simple plot, the worldbuilding and lore are great, but the story itself is just okay at best.
Not recommended because this game has lots of highs, but some lows that make the experience painful.
