This game was a major rollercoaster in quality. That inconsistency alone makes the game a bit disorienting as not only is the game significantly different from Home Sweet Home—which I was already ambivalent on—but it feels in many ways like different games mashed together throughout its own length. I legitimately started to get it mixed up with some other recent horror games I've played just given that it is in some ways more like other games than it is the title that precedes it. Further, not only is the game quite different throughout, but I found the beginning of the game rather terrible, primarily due to some very bad gameplay design, which I'll get into more specifically below.

One of the most noticeable differences from this game's predecessor is that the graphics and visuals are significantly improved. The first episode's graphics were decent for an indie game but while environments looked good, character models were often quite shoddy, if well designed from an artistic standpoint. Here, the character models look significantly better and don't have the jarring juxtaposition of looking like they're not a part of the same world because they're of lower graphical quality. But overall, I found this to be a big plus as one of the series' greatest strengths is its atmosphere and the visuals of this entry were able to serve that purpose so much more strongly.

The story I am ambivalent on. One thing I did like was that there is definitely a continuation from the first game. It seemed evident since I first saw the "to be continued" at the end of episode 1 that it felt a lot more like a timing and budget decision to split the game, rather than because the narrative demanded it. But I had my doubts that they just didn't have a succinct ending and this game would be really unrelated. However no, this game picks up where the first one left off as Tim desperately tries to track down Jane and uncover the reason why they've been subjected to this nightmare world. I don't want to spoil too much, but my favorite part of the story is that it did wrap things up well and there was a clever connection between the various events in both games, even if some of it I'm still a little confused on. I was a bit worried by the ending of the first game that the story would lack coherence but it actually does make good sense by the end, even if a few things could be clearer. I didn't find it as potent, but the game does to some extent continue with the structure of dropping character and lore pamphlets to relate happenings to certain aspects of Thai cultural and religious (mostly Buddhist) origin to explain some of the monsters and puzzle themes, which was something I liked a lot in the first game.

There is a bit of break in continuity of structure with the move to the second episode. Notably, the first game featured intermittent trips to the couple's house where you'd have to solve a series of short "puzzles" (scare quotes because these puzzles were basically just walking between rooms until something happened) until you were sent back to hell. This is how this game starts, but you no longer return intermittently. That's okay with me as I found those parts more frustrating and dull, but it still feels weird to suddenly cut a very regular aspect of the structure. This contributes further to the awkwardness of both of these games. They feel like indie titles more than some others, but part of that is in the way that the developers' improving skills feel evident in the game in a way that is actually to its detriment as the game pushes to do so much more than it did before and loses its more holistic identity while also showing the growing pains evident in that improvement.

Which dovetails to my first major complaint: the first half or so of the game I found to be pretty painful and frustrating. If you played through all of episode 1, you'll have an idea of the shadowy wooden interior walls and corridors you had to wander around very slowly—and for way too long—at the end. You're in a similar environment here, dealing with a scary woman, somewhat similar to how you did Belle in the first game...however here you can't see more than a few feet in front of you, it's just pitch black. You're somehow supposed to stealth around without any real indication of where the pursuer is. If she grabs you, you have an extremely brutal QTE to escape her grasp, taking you down to near death if you mash the fuck out of the 'e' key (I had to switch to controller as this was breaking my finger). There is an easy mode I turned on because this is one of the only difficulty aspects of the game and did not feel like a fun kind of challenge at all. That shift at least made it to where I could just mash the button "a lot" and get taken down like 1/3 of my health. However, she can quite easily just grab you again and getting away to prevent that is not easy either, especially considering how dark everything is and how hard it is to navigate the maze-like hallways. Overall, it feels like they tried to do two contrary things with this segment: (A) they wanted a stealth segment where you sneak by a scary monster; and (B) they wanted the scare factor of not knowing what's a few feet in front of you combined with the knowledge that the monster can pop out at any moment because she might be right ahead. Neither of those concepts are bad. Most of episode 1 relied on that A structure and the B concept can be really scary. But when you combine these you get stealth that doesn't work and the appearances out of nowhere become more frustrating than scary as you're repeatedly having to break your fingers just to avoid instantly dying. To make matters worse, one room requires a continuous QTE to escape through a door, similar to the saw in the first episode, however here it is a QTE where, you guessed it, you have to mash the fuck out of one button. Worse, the same monster loves to camp right by it and will grab you in which case...yeah, you have to keep mashing the same button you were just mashing your heart out on. This part really felt more like they were trying to hurt your hands than make the game any kind of fun. Sadly, there were several other really frustrating gameplay segments in this section that I won't even get into, but it is without exaggeration that I say I had very little, if any, fun with it. My first session with the game, I pushed through this part, as brutal as it was, but it definitely made me not feel up to picking it back up for several days and I really only did because of the hope it would get better since I thought the first game was okay.

On the plus side, while the lack of continuity hurt my overall experience, the game after that part, while not amazing, is much better and while again different from the first episode, it at least feels more on par with that experience. For one, you're mostly outdoors and everywhere you go, even in the caves you explore, it's far brighter than the first segment of the game. There are enemies, but you're much less defenseless and the sequences are a lot more reasonable. There are a variety of segments that combine stealth with light combat in a way that doesn't go too far in either direction. I also felt the puzzles were generally reasonable in this game (though I've seen some complaints about them online). I left the game on easy as it feels like they went overboard in trying to make a punishing difficulty for some of the combat, but on that setting, it was fine.

As a quick note on difficulty, I do tend to be a try-hard and I'll play most games at least a step above normal, but generally only if I really care about the game and find it fun and worth challenging myself. The gameplay of this this title feels more functional to the overall experience and combat and the like is not particularly "fun" in its own right, so I really didn't feel that inclination at all. There's really only a Normal and an Easy mode but I'd highly recommend the Easy throughout as I feel like while challenging gameplay can be fun, this was the wrong game for them to make so punishing.

At the end of the game, I did feel pretty satisfied with the latter experience of the game and with the story's conclusion. There are things I don't like about how the story turned out, but I appreciated that it was a coherent wrap-up to the story. As well, the last few parts felt like a reasonable culmination to the gameplay that allowed for a surprising degree of action from a game that started off in episode 1 having basically no real "combat." My biggest complaints are that I think the team learned how to do new things with the gameplay and applied them way too thoroughly without enough adequate playtesting. As well, sometimes—and especially with indie titles—less can be a lot more. Even when the combat was stronger, the game really didn't need it to succeed at the things its predecessor did. And the effort to make the game feel like more than just a Haunted House simulator ultimately just made for a far worse experience.

Overall, I'm a little unsure how to succinctly put my overall feelings on the game. In a way it feels more like I'm reviewing two different games at the same time. But ending my first session kind of pissed off and my last session feeling decently satisfied, I guess on balance, I land somewhere in the middle. I'd give the first half 1 star because I do regret that experience and the story wasn't enough to make up for it. I'd give the second half a pretty solid 3.5-4 star. It's still rather janky and unwieldy, but for these simple indie horror titles, it's pretty well-done. Given that first half is so bad and you have to get through it without much of a way around it, I'm going to lean on the side of 2 stars rather than 3 to indicate the uneven experience that felt like a step down from episode 1, despite the fact the team was trying to do so (or rather "too") much more.