TEW2 was definitely a disappointment, I loved the first game so much.
Don't know how they botched it so hard.
TEW2's first half up till, Stefano was pretty good, especially the initial buildup at the very beginning.. Where did all that craziness go? The eye that appears to your left as you begin to traverse the stairs, as the huge clock pendulum sways back and forth in a rhythm that marries itself to a bell in a distance that gets louder as you get further. The obscure and visceral paintings, the warped atmosphere. It was a very good setup for dread that just kept watering itself down, more and more as you progressed. By the time you got to Theodore's half of the game, it changes drastically.
I think the game should have been less in your face and more about suspense and slow burn, like how the beginning felt.
The combat was more refined than TEW1, but still felt similar.
The same thing with TEW1 (played this on Akumu recently and then on Nightmare for a more casual experience cause fuck going through Akumu 2 times) It starts off the same, it builds a heavy atmosphere that is seemingly less coherent than TEW2's, after a ways in.
I like'em both a lot, but personally, after the chapter The Craftsman's Tools, the game starts to feel a little action heavy with all the turrets and fucking humvees, lol.
They both suffer from similar stuff, they both have strong starts, but start to falter at the end, to be fair, I thought TEW1's end game encounters brought back that scary, fucked up looking atmosphere from the beginning just before the final fight of the game.
