just about the best case scenario for a sequel; maintaining almost everything that made the first one great and building on it in subtle but interesting ways. the core gameplay loop remains fantastic; doesn’t matter how many corridors you trudge through or rooms you clear — every encounter is incredibly tense and exciting. i missed the sort of heavy clunkiness of the original a bit, but the slightly slicker, more fluid combat has its merits too and is well motivated character-wise: isaac would be a little more adept at dealing with these things by now. found all the new weapons and mechanics to be mostly fantastic; this time around i favored the seeker rifle, which in combination with liberal use of stasis absolutely shreds necromorphs. ridiculous name for them btw, necromorphs lol. the writing in these games is definitely…something. the narrative elements are more foregrounded here which isn’t exactly to its benefit as it’s very silly, rote stuff when approached on that level. but i did find isaac’s internal meltdown over the course of the game to be visceral (😏) and affecting; the visions of nicole are well realized and implemented. hard for me to buy into this as a story about a man overcoming his grief and guilt tho - partly why i found the final boss encounter (and really the only true boss encounter in the game) to be a little anticlimactic, especially compared to the last one - and i still think these games would be better with far less narrative context. let it be about a guy walking around fixing machines and fighting alien zombies and that’s it! this marker mythology shit is whatever to me!! but that’s okay. it doesn’t actually impede the experience in any significant way i just don’t think it’s the ideal package for this gameplay. don’t have much if any complaints beyond that; this series remains some of the very best sci-fi/horror action you can find in any medium