For personal reference more than anything else. Have done the spoiler warning just in case.

First time completing the game after a playthrough ended four chapters in about 6 years ago. Played on Normal as Emily, low chaos run.

This game is certainly a major improvement to me after the first one for many reasons but the first is the story which actually feels present in this game rather than an afterthought. Its not the best thing in the world and definitely has issues but it still gives me something to follow and care about if I choose to.

The characters are also generally better this time around with a voiced protagonist which felt like a strange missed opportunity in the first game that led to a disconnect between Corvo and what was happening in the story but this time I actually felt something when Emily would get angry with or try to help someone. Saying this though, there felt like some room for improvement regarding Emily beginning with the fact that she seems mostly indifferent to the fact the voice of her dead mother is talking to her through the heart which felt like wasted potential for what could have been an incredibly emotional moment yet great bit of character development for Emily considering what ends up happening with the heart. Talking about wasted potential, there seemed to be an attempt to have Emily see what the residents of Karnaca have gone through in her own eyes outside of the perspective of her Empress position, but it really only gets mentioned a couple of times with what seems to be a conclusion despite this plotline coming out of nowhere it seems. Its probably been done a lot before but it still could've have been interesting and added another layer to Emily.

The rest of the characters are nothing special but compared to the ones in the first game its like night and day. Meagan Foster is essentially just the gruff no nonsense character who has a dark past archetype but the conversation between her and Emily about who exactly she used to hang around with and what they did was great and I also appreciated her not falling into the same trap a lot of other characters like her do as she didn't ever seem to come out with annoying jokes and instead was just straight and to the point a lot of the time. Delilah was a odd antagonist who felt kinda Disney villainesque especially with the opening and her backstory, although I did enjoy learing about her and her past which meant I ended up kind of liking her in a way. There felt like another missed opportunity to be able to communicate with her throughout the first half of the game considering you talk to her (or a representation of her) quite a bit during the second half which I feel added to the build up of facing her at the end.

There also seemed to be an attempt to improve the targets who you face in the game as they're given more character and/or personality and they also feel more connected to Emily's personal journey rather than just being someone who worked with the main antagonist or knew someone who did like in the first game. They still do have this aspect to them but feel more complex and interesting making how you deal with them have more weight.

Along with the story and characters you also have improvements made to the gameplay which is so much better here, the first game was already fun and had a lot of great ideas so this game really only needed to change a couple of things here and there and just kind of fix or improve stuff that needed it. The biggest thing to note is that the stealth is something that was worked on and not only are there more options for non-lethal playthroughs but the game actually seemed to play around with enemy placement and I think how aggressive/smart the A.I is given how the game felt harder than the first which made getting the stealth right more fun.

Emily's powers are pretty similar to Corvo's in Dishonored 1 as she has her own version of Blink called Far Reach which is still really fun to use although a little finicky not quite as good and also her own Dark Vision, but she does have some interesting ones of her own like Domino which allows you to link up to 4 enemies together who will all die or get knocked out if you kill or knock out just one of them and Doppelganger which while I didn't use that much still was handy to draw the attention of the enemies away from me.

The chapters themselves were all at the very least good with some real standouts either for being great missions to explore like Addermire or for bringing something new to the table like the Clockwork Mansion which provided a memorable and fun experience seeing the mansion shift and rearrange at the pull of a lever and also with the clockwork soldiers being interesting enemies to deal with or the Stilton House with the timepiece that allowed you to see between two different timelines that did confuse me at certain points when trying to keep track of what was happening in each timeline but was such a cool mechanic that I'm eager to come back to.

This game was so fun to play through and as someone who really likes stealth games this is easily one of my favourite experiences when it comes to this genre. Already planning to come back to the game to do a high chaos run with Corvo but will probably come back again after that just to play it again normally. Really good game that's biggest flaws seem to be missed opportunities which I don't even slightly mind one bit.