If anything stood out in The Evil Within, it was its morphing set pieces made possible by the distorted consciousness of STEM. We don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, though, as playing at the highest level forces you to explore and uncover more of Union’s secrets.
THE EVIL WITHIN 2 PS4 PRO UPGRADE
It’s no longer a grind on the game’s default Survivalist setting, but on the hardest difficulty level, prepare to grind for those attributes and crafting materials to upgrade your firepower. To be clear, the most headache-inducing aspects of the original - the crafting, and attribute power ups - have been toned down. Do you take out that group of monsters guarding a weapons cache, or do you sneak by them en route to your next objective? There’s unfortunately not quite enough variety in the enemies and their behavior, but fortunately you are given a wide range of ways to deal with them. This is where The Evil Within 2 hits its stride: Choosing when to hunt for supplies and when to engage, how you spend your limited upgrades, whether you fight enemies or try to sneak around them – The Evil Within 2 constantly forces you to weigh difficult options. Ammo and supplies are still scarce, forcing you too meticulously loot through the dilapidating buildings to better prepare you for your next trek beneath the darkened sky. The town setting implores you to be stealthy, as you never know when you’ll be ambushed by a pack of monsters emerging from a grove of trees or an alley. The Evil Within 2’s story will keep you guessing until the final frame. Unlike a lot of recent open world games that feel packed with obligatory filler content, The Evil Within 2’s Union is just big enough to get sidetracked in, but not so much that you’ll get totally derailed with optional objectives. As opposed to the more linear original, The Evil Within 2 features an open world layout in and around the town of Union. The story often works so well because it has been broken into digestible chunks of action and exploration for the player to take at their own pace. It shines through superb pacing, impactful cutscenes, and writing and dialogue that far surpass the original. A story of redemption, love, and loss, it’s surprisingly heartfelt for such a grotesquely gory game.
All of the pieces fit together in a story that will keep you guessing until its final frame. The Evil Within 2 successfully fleshes out Mobius and makes much better use of the STEM system, removing obtuse elements from the first one. While there are certainly callbacks and references to the first game that will enrich the experience for players that ventured into STEM the first time around, the game itself is coherent and self-contained enough that newcomers won’t be totally lost. Injecting a more personal storyline raises the stakes, and as the game progresses, each death serves a meaningful purpose towards Sebastian’s internal and external struggle. Unlike the first game, Sebastian feels like a full-fledged character in whom you can be personally invested, rather than a generic detective thwarting ambiguous evils.
Stefano Valenti, the grotesque photographer, is only the beginning of Sebastian’s problems. “ The Evil Within 2 is a layered, story rich experience that transcends the typical definition of survival horror.”