A lot of people online went on about how this was better than the first game in every way, and I can't help but feel the opposite.

Before I get into my issues though, I'll say that I DID enjoy this game, albeit for different reasons than the first. I liked the more open-ended nature of the game, both in terms of the overworld map design, and in how you can approach enemies. Encounters in general give you a good amount of leeway between going aggressive, stealthy, and evasion, with that philosophy being extended to some bosses like the Guardian, who's able to be skipped altogether. Stealth also being built upon was also much appreciated, and now it actually feels like it has more of a seat at the table, mechanically speaking. It definitely ended up being one of my favoured approaches.

The more focused, and personal story also definitely had its moments. I did get reasonably invested in Sebastian himself, and generally enjoyed seeing him change from a miserable alcoholic, back into the father he used to be before the events of the first game, though I miss his old VA.

With all that being said, I thought that this game was overall a lot more generic than the first. First way that's the case is in the art direction, which I'm not the first to point out. I really don't think they used STEM to its full potential the way they did with the previous game; The setting is largely just an ordinary town that while sure, is broken up and floating on multiple islands, isn't itself all that strange, or twisted, outside the final chapters of the game. I think there was some missed potential for seeing the town either gradually become stranger over time as opposed to just it abruptly being set aflame, and then being made completely desolate. And even when the game decides to go for a less grounded style in its levels, like Theodore's tower, or the theater, I don't think it stacks up to the first. But there are some moments where the art direction pops off pretty hard, like at the end of this one sidequest, where you see a ghost(?) of Stefano capping some dude in the head, and right as he fires, it cuts back to our "reality" where the dude is just getting blasted in the head on repeat.

In addition, I think the story of the game isn't particularly good either, even if it IS more focused, and personal. Now don't get me wrong, the first game's writing was also pretty bad, but this game's bad writing is bad for different, less entertaining reasons. A huge aspect of what made the first game's bad writing so much fun was how it seemed like none of the characters gave a shit about what was happening to them despite how utterly insane the setting was. Now, we just have poorly acted and written melodrama about Sebastian's wife and kid, who we don't get to see enough of. And don't even get me started on some of the plot choices. Like, apparently, Lilly was found, and kidnapped by Mobius, because her standardized test scores were just that high. Also not a fan of how this game handles its villains: Stefano just dies halfway through, revealing he was working for this other, less interesting dude, and then less interesting dude gets murked, and then the final fight is with Myra gone insane, and meanwhile, there's the greater-scope villain, the Administrator, who shows up at the beginning, and at the end just to get killed.

And this is the part where I think people will disagree with me the most, but I also think the gameplay of TEW2 is a step back from the first, despite it building on stealth, and the attempts at more open-ended encounter design. A lot of the interesting mechanics from the first are excised altogether, or heavily pared down. Most obvious of which being the removal of matches. 

Matches were a huge part of the risk-reward dynamic that made the first game so much fun, and instead, now we have the stomp, which I think is a vastly inferior mechanic. Let me elaborate a bit on what made the match system so interesting: First off, it was a limited resource where you actually had to weigh up whether it was worth using in a given encounter. Second, matches were not just for finishing off fallen enemies, but also for instantly killing attacking enemies very close by. So if you were willing to risk having enemies get close to you, you could use a single match to wipe out several enemies at once with minimal use of ammo. But if you screwed up and mistimed it, you would either waste a match, and/or get hit, possibly (Or definitely, on Akumu) dying.

Stomping, on the other hand, takes none of your resources (Not even something like stamina, which I think would've made some sense), and ONLY works on enemies who have fallen over already. The risk-reward dynamic that came from matches is gone. And sure, I've seen in-universe justifications for this with stuff like "Fire isn't a weakness of Lilly in the same way it is of Ruvik". Even taking this at word, I think that's an extremely strange decision at best considering how much of a role fire plays in this game's storyline, but that's not really my point. The point is that I think the new mechanics are less interesting than the first game's.

In addition, there are WAY less traps than in the first game; As far as I remember, there's only the explosive red barrels/fallen cars, and oil puddles. I get that the traps were frustrating for a lot of people, but again, it's another decision that heavily weakens the risk-reward dynamics from the first game, and really cuts down on the interesting environmental interactions. 

And stealth, which while I appreciate being more fleshed out upon, is completely overpowered, especially when you have the upgrades that let you run over to a dude, and instantly kill them from a distances, and the one where you can kill enemies while in cover. Not to mention that enemies give up looking for you pretty quickly. Given my previous two points, you can probably predict what I have to say about that, at this point.

What else? Oh yeah, critical hits and enemy design. Critical hits are no longer insta-kills on headshot, which is already a pretty hefty nerf, but the enemy design makes them even worse, since enemies erratically jitter around in ways that makes it way more difficult to shoot at them with any sort of precision, making critical hits feel pretty much worthless.

I want to emphasize though, I still enjoyed the game. At the end of the day, it's fun to throw a shock bolt into a crowd, and then run up and stomp on everyone's heads. It's fun to sneak up behind enemies, barrel at them full tilt, and then pounce on them with a knife to the neck. It's fun to get up in enemy's faces, and smash their skulls with an axe. I really do appreciate their attempt at more accessible, open-ended gameplay, but it's not the type of fun that really makes me want to revisit the game from the same angle, or in the same way as The Evil Within 1 with what it removes and changes.