So I finished this up this morning. Last few chapters were probably the best even if there wasn't much gameplay. Final boss was pretty solid fight.
Game was ok, I feel like for everything it does right it does something wrong. If the original game was a bunch of 9/10 sections with a few too many 1/10 sections, TEW2 is a bunch of 7/10 sections with a few 8/10 sections and a few 5/10 sections.
The stealth is good, but it's overpowered as hell along with the bolt gun thunderbolts/smoke. Meanwhile the guns and gunplay is pretty bad. Enemies are bullet sponges especially in the 2nd and 3rd section of the game. Since ammo is scarce, aiming sucks and I have to use a ton of it for one grunt zombie in the 3rd act whereas I can just 1 hit kill them with stealth...yeah there's no point in doing anything other than stealth. You can even run away if spotted and they'll lose track of you and you can try again.
So the stealth works and is fun, but it's also slow and for a RE4-ish action-y game like TEW2 you want to be able to fight but it's just really against you when you do. Then you have all the sections/bosses/mini-bosses where you are forced into combat and because the gunplay isn't great and the aiming is bad (playing on PC with a controller, every time I had to shoot I'd switch over to kb+m because aiming was awful on controller [still bad on PC too]), the combat sections aren't particularly good/satisfying. They're ok at best.
The thing is that replay it on NG+, the 2nd episode of the game (which is still intro before combat) is the only "scary/horror" section of the game. Like that part feels like the original and has tension and oddly art direction (with the hanging bodies and stuff) that once you leave it you never really see again for the rest of the game. The atmosphere of the rest of the game is closer to Dead Space 3/RE5/6 or something where it's just kinda action zombie/monster game. But where everything kinda sucks outside stealth. On NG+ you get letterbox view like the first game and turning it on for my NG+ run I think it helps the art direction/atmosphere somewhat although I still feel that is a big step down from the first game. Music too, there's hardly any music after the intro outside one nice stage before the final boss. The original's soundtrack by Grasshopper's Masafumi Takada was good. This time it's someone else and is very minimal.
Talking about the original, TEW2 surprisingly has a bunch of gameplay/subplot sections devoted to "remember TEW1?" which eventually go nowhere and feel kind of out place and more like easter eggs for TEW1 players. Didn't really feel that fit with the game and would rather they didn't exist and TEW2 focused more on standing on its own. TEW2 feels like a game that kinda knows what its trying to do but lacks the confidence and is done weakly if that make sense.
Finally the story, the story handling in this game is weird. It tries to be a SUPER SUPER SERIOUS DRAMA STORY, but all of the real story is saved for Act 2 & 3 which are about 3-5 hours each and Act 1 is ~8-10 hours and half the game. So there's like no story for half the game and then nothing but non-stop SERIOUS DRAMA PLOT in the 2nd half. The story might have been ok, but the voice acting (holy shit), facial animation and cutscene direction are really bad videogame cutscene quality. Like some of the RE stuff, which just doesn't work at all with the serious family drama story they are trying to tell. I really wish I could have taken it seriously and appreciated the story but everytime the main guy talks in his Solid Snake impression I kinda rolled my eyes. And the problem is that if the story isn't working for you there is so many cutscenes and walk&talk sections that slows down the pacing. Game is pretty long at 15-20 hours.
It's not bad and I enjoyed it at times stealthing around and occasional boss fights, but to me it really comes across as trying to appease mainstream mass audience and getting rid of most of what made the original unique in the process (like why the hell is letterbox view a NG+ unlockable? Probably because mainstream reviews complained about the original being letterboxed -_-). That said pretty sure we're not getting a 3rd game and I'm fine with that. Hopefully next Tango game is Mikami directed.
Also story-wise:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
For all the throwback stuff to the original in this, I'm really surprised they never did anything with Ruvik in TEW2. I mean they kinda left him off wandering in the real world at the end of TEW1 and I thought they'd work him into a sequel, especially with the whole taking down Mobius angle.
Also the final Kidman gunplay stuff just showed how bad the aiming was. It took me forever to shoot the damn agents with the revolver even on kb+m. The crosshair kept swaying and everytime the agents pop out to shoot it would force you back into cover. Really weak gunplay in this game imo. Shotgun was the only decent feeling weapon imo.
