Just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse for one Sebastian Castellanos, Tango Gameworks managed to make a sequel out of his struggles. This is a good one, and it definitely brings some new changes to the series. How does it compare to the first one? Let’s talk it out.

What You Need to Know

The Evil Within 2 reunites us with Sebastian 3 years after the events at Beacon Mental Hospital. Sebastian is drinking his life away in a local pub haunted by the visions of his daughter Lily, who died in a house fire years before The Evil Within. Juli Kidman, Sebastian’s former partner, approaches him with information that his daughter is actually alive. Plot twist huh?

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as go here and grab your daughter as Sebastian has to renter the STEM system in order to be reunited with Lily. This means Seb has to work with Mobius, the same a-holes who made antagonist Ruvik. It gets good, so that’s where I’ll stop myself from spoiling anything!

Gameplay

Most of the gameplay from The Evil Within makes a return to the sequel. Sebastian still handles like a stiff police officer who isn’t shaken by the events that transpire around him. Players still have an inventory to manage and can map items to the favorite key (or whatever you cool kids call it now a days). It pretty much stays pretty much the same; the key word being “pretty much”.

By now you’ve probably seen gameplay of The Evil Within 2, and one of the most noticeable changes is the open world. Sebastian reenters STEM and is placed in the town of Union. This sets the backdrop for said open world as players can travel all over Union. Monsters roam the streets and will pop up to harass you as you wander around Union, but you can also tackle side quests or find upgrades for Sebastian’s arsenal. Sebastian is equipped with a communicator that picks up “signals” that can lead you to either your next objective or side mission. There are also Safe Houses you enter to interact with the other Mobius agents trapped in Union.

The next biggest inclusion is the crafting system. This time around Sebastian can find parts and ingredients used in crafting ammo, health kits and the works. Seb can craft said supplies from a work bench or he can craft ammo/medkits in the field but at a higher resource cost. It’s essentially Resource Management 101.

There are other neat changes such as the addition of a cover system to hide Seb from the baddies. Upgrading your skills is a little different this time as you can now collect Red Gel which allows you to unlock higher tiered perks. There are some pretty dank abilities such as the chance to dodge attacks or sneak killing from cover. Trust me, it’s better than I make it sound.

Impressions 

I played The Evil Within on Casual mode, and I decided to not be a wuss so I turned up the difficulty to Survival mode for the second entry. Pretty interesting experience to say the least, but still a heck of a ride.

When I finally got to control Sebastian, I noticed the heavy influences of The Last of Us and Dead Rising all over this title. All three of the games feature a group of characters trying to survive in an apocalyptic world filled with crazy inhuman beings and they all feature a crafting system that involves a work bench. Sebastian crouches the same as Joel does from The Last of Us, there’s a Clicker-like enemy similar in both titles, even the sneak kill animation reminds me of Joel shivving zombies. You could go even further and say this is a clone of Dead Rising 4; the visuals are almost the same, Safe Houses, crafting, etc. Heck it works though so I’m not complaining.

The addition of the cover system is a dope little feature since I won’t have to cheese the camera around an angle to see where the enemy is coming from. My complaint about the crafting system is that giving players a crafting system is just a cover up for not giving them good amounts of ammo to survive. For example, you’re more likely to find crafting ingredients than ammo, and if I don’t find or have the rest of the parts needed, then I just have a bunch of various parts that don’t help me make ammo. Hopefully that made sense, and unfortunately, there is no skill that reduces the cost of crafting.

I will say this game is just as creepy as the first one, if not a bit more creepier. Despite the introduction of the open world setting, the game still manages to maintain it’s creepy vibe, and thankfully, you’ll still navigate a few tight corridors that provide the jumps. At the time of this post, I’ve completed my play through, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story is pretty solid with some interesting background as to what happened to Sebastian’s family before the events of The Evil Within.

All in all, this was definitely a good sequel. The new changes work well with the already established formula, although the game’s identity has changed a bit with clear influences from The Last of Us and Dead Rising. Let me know what you think of The Evil Within 2!