The Evil Within 2

The one room that really got me was the one where you go back to Beacon. That room really freaked me out. Not sure what was going to happen at all. Also the train was scary as hell, because you never really had a clue what was around the corner and it was such a tight space.

I have to admit I really take my time, I scout, and really treat it like I only have one life. So I almost go full Rainbow Six when I go into a house, checking every corner until I'm sure it's all clear before I loot away haha.

Finally beat Chapter 3. But I am having a bit of a storage problem haha. All my ammo packs are filled to the brim, only thing I'm really lacking is weapon parts. Need to upgrade my ammo capacity I feel. Allow myself to carry some extra bullets.

Have to say the dog-enemies scare the living hell out of me. I dislike that you can't stealth kill them though. If you make stealth such a big part of your game, having a stealth immune enemy is a bit weird.

You can't stealth kill dogs roy, that's wrong and stuff. The EW wiki is lacking EW2 enemy info, haven't read anything about those crawler types, you can stomp on them no?

The 'dog' crawlers are dangerous. They're fast and can take a beating. You can't outrun them (though if you can break line of sight and hide, you're good...maybe) and they have a jumping attack to easily close distance.

That's based on Nightmare though. I avoided them wherever I could.

Not really sure if they have a weakness. I'm assuming you want to aim for their ugly faces. I've knocked them down but never tried to stomp.

Yeah one of them took 4 sniper rounds to the face. I generally use elevations to avoid them, I ran into the woods in the first fight and the second one can be skipped thankfully if you're smart. But yeah they creep me out haha!

Finally got to the first boss, pretty darn fun - not too hard. Ran around a bit, set some stuff on fire and nuked it with explosive bolts...poor thing didn't stand a chance. I have to say the game is a bit jarring now. Chapter 3 was such a big open romp, felt so fresh with the open world. And now it's back to the linear style, though I like it it also feels very EW1, while Union felt really like this 'next step'. 

I am still in severe ammo troubles. I had to not pick up 7 shotgun shells because I had too much <_<
First world problems I guess.

Oh and THE SHOOTING GALLERY IS BACK OH MY GOD I AM CRYING I LOVE IT

Dont worry, there's more fun times ahead for you my boy.

I'm in ng+ just screwing around and getting any files or keys I missed. Only found around half of them in my first playthrough.

I have to say, my feelings of this game keep growing. I am honestly considering doing a handgun only run after this, and a knife-only run in the future. I really love this game.

Would handgun only be possible? I guess if that's all you're focusing your green gel and parts on, you could upgrade it very quickly. Is there enough ammo to take down bosses though? We can't carry that much in this game, as you well know.

There are some parts that I think would be horrible, though I've never done them with an upgraded handgun before so who knows?

Eh that's the fun of it, I mean you can always do it since you have a knife (yay). Again, just an idea for down the road haha. Not planning on doing it anytime soon, I'm only in chapter 4 haha.

Weird little trick that I found by accident, but if you shoot a smoke arrow at unsuspecting enemies that carry molotovs, they will drop them out of shock and burn to death. Found this out by accident when I saw a few and wanted to test the smoke arrow. Pretty cool!

Where are you up to now?

Going toward the theater now, just cleared the whole city.

Nice. Did you like those laughing freaks roaming the streets?

Hilarious easter egg if you backtrack all the way to the start in chapter 7, priceless that they allow this.

Also yeah they were pretty fun to deal with. I generally laid some traps, headshot them with a sniper and when they reached me they had been succumbed to some painful explosive traps and ending with a smoke bomb to which I started pumping them full of shotty shells.

I just killed the Harbinger boss (flamethrower). So far the bosses have been really disappointing, I actually like the City Hall boss best (especially after I heard you could stealth the fight). Stefano was meh and the flamethrower dude was a serious bulletsponge. I did get the revolver though, really cool the way he holds it in his hands.

Not liking the current chapter though. I'm in..hell? I think? And Theo is a lot less interesting for me than Stefano (me being an artist too, hell I knew artists almost just like him (outside of killing people that is)).

hahaha what the hell?

With those freaks you can do something really cheap, which is enter a building. They can't follow, but you can open the door and shoot them, then step back in.

I don't like that chapter either. Too gross.

You can deal with the flamethrower guy with smoke bolts and stealth kills. Takes like 5 lol. You can destroy their fuel tank, but it makes him harder. He runs after you and does melee instead. Do it if you want to get a trophy, otherwise I wouldn't recommend it, though smoke bolts still do the same no matter what state he's in.

Ha I'd never thought about entering a building haha! Pretty smart!

Never thought of using smoke bolts on him, thought he'd just be immune to stealth attacks. Good to know since he really drained my resources to some degree. Actually had to craft some ammo. I am doing really well though in terms of ammo and resources. I have 300+ gunpowder, max ammo for everything, max healing items plus some in the lockers etc. Currently saving gel for the bullet-time ability.

I forgot to note that I really like the flame-dudes. I like how their flame cycle works, a cool mechanic.

I do have to admit that smoke grenades are...insanely good. If I see a group of 3-4 enemies I just throw it in and nuke it hard.

A lot of people are complaining about the flamethrower's health. I blasted him with like 6 full upgrade magnum shots and I think that only brought him to near death.

Smoke allows you to get in multiple stealth kills. 3 bolts max should be all you need.

Should be noted, for whatever reason, it is a great place to farm ammo as it regenerates there if you just run circles. Might be a glitch or a quick fix to allow people to actually finish it.

I think it's just another one of the things they made easier. I heard it happens in certain other fights too. The devs also made a comment about making sure you always had what you need. Makes me wonder, would ammo respawn ANYWHERE if we purposely use up everything?

Finished the game yesterday! All in all I loved the game and was surprised by the pleathora of unlocks at the end, I haven't seen that in a LONG time. Really makes me appreciate the game even more.

The Theodore part really was the weaker element for me. It was just filled with too much padding. His 'open world' section was a slightly altered one of one I'd already done, so completely exploring that whole thing twice was a bit of a chore. His Marrow parts weren't that interesting either, nor the final climb which was just wave after wave of enemies and Harbingers. I tried testing their HP but dear god are they sponges. Four stealth attacks is a lot, but I emptied 40(!!!) revolver bullets - fully upgraded mind you - in one's head and he still kept coming. They give a ton of Gel though. I really loved the boss fight though against Theo, fighting all the old bosses was a great twist and Seb turning around and just straight up mauling the Sadist was a great touch. I didn't feel afraid, I felt enpowered to an insane degree. The choir-like music helped too, amazing game.

The final final boss was cool, but also a bit of a let down. The moments leading up to it felt really filler with those encounters, I generally stealth past but I had so much ammo left I just decided to go ham. Also that mini-boss felt like cut content, and looking at the trailers it was since that thing was in numerous other places too apparently. The boss itself was so-so, I loved the design and arena, also the story behind it, but the mechanics were a bit shallow. Shoot the bright yellow spot until it dies. The mechanics of the Evil Within don't really gel well with super action boss, way better with bosses like the Keeper that allow stealth for instance. I just ran in circles and actually never got hit because she was so slow. The parts after that made me laugh at how awesome it was, some really cool scene transitions and playing as Kid was extremely entertaining. Nice little nod to the previous DLC's.

In other news I did get Cascade and Bullettime near the end and ... wow. Does really change the game. I was making headshots left and right and enemies generally didn't stand a freak'n chance haha. Did make the game maybe a bit too action-y by buying them, almost felt like an arcade game.

I would like to one day play it with Infinite Ammo on NG+ and just go full Max Payne 3 on the game. But I don't see myself doing Classic anytime soon.

Next up is probably Handgun only, or just No Upgrades Nightmare. I think Handgun only, I always like those types of runs. I'm making a map now of where all the important items are in chapter 3 for future runs (will do the same for 7 and 13 I think). Will make those chapters a bit easier/faster.

Final time was 23 hours btw.

I knew you'd enjoy those unlockables haha.

It is so rare these days, and it always was my favorite thing in a game. I do find it strange that you cannot use other costumes in Classic difficulty for some reason..

Yeah that's odd. Maybe it creates some issue with the auto save which classic doesn't have.

What did you think of the boss fights? I found some to be pretty uninspired and underwhelming, very standard like the second to last boss(apparently called Effigy)Roy mentioned seemed rushed and a rehash of amalgam alpha from EW1, I think Stefano is the most interesting, the guardian is cool and so is obscura, but O'Neal boss looks the same as the harbingers, is he any different?

I'd mention keeper and Laura but they aren't any different, well Laura being present highlights the lack of match mechanic a bit given she was design around that, but it's meant to be a call back and not a serious fight I take given the flamethrower you can get to fry her. Silly that Theo used Laura as a boss yet she is weak to fire, ironic given his faction fetishises fire.

The white goo boss(called watcher) was the most disappointing, since its barely classified as a boss, as you can just sneak or run by and fighting it seems easy too, really odd given its connection to Myra as it's seen later with her functioning as her second in command, and given the design of Myra phase 3 and the cutscene right after looking like the goo boss as if that's supposed to mean something.

The bosses were really hit and miss for me, I feel that the whole game went down in quality once Stephano left and Theodore entered the picture. Theo's first levels are decent fun (a puzzle, a cabin fight, some cool new enemies) and then turns into a revisit of a section you already explored...now fully restocked with goodies so you have to clear it all over again. Out of the bosses though, I like Stephano and Obscura the most. The Guardian was a fun fight, but nothing too special - though I did like that you could run from the fight which was a nice touch.

O'Neal was a bit overdone for me. He is pretty much the same as his harbinger allies though a bit more agressive. I hate how spongy he is and how stupid. The whole fight I just ran from pillar to pillar and he couldn't get to me. Horrible pathfinding on that guy. I can sort of understand what they were going for but he just wasn't interesting. The fact that you also can't really stealth him (he basically becomes freak'n clairvoyant after one stealth attack) and that he absorbs hits like mad says enough. Guy can tank 50 revolver shots to his FACE and not transition to the second phase. That's a bit over the top, he has more HP than the final boss even.

The Watcher...I didn't even know it was a boss until I read it online. I just sneaked past. That was it. I was really surprised to never see it return afterwards. Thought it was like this cinematic introduction, then stealth and then the fight. But the fight never came...

Considering the genre and the mechanics at play though, I'm really impressed.

Also I started my Handgun only run, I'm doing it via stream.

The O'Neal boss reminds me of The Fury boss in MGS3 except poorly executed, similar stealth based flamethrower boss, you can shoot the area which has water filled pipes to dose his flames along with other neat tricks you've played mgs1 right? It's like a variant of the Vulcan raven boss, great boss.

The end game Myra section seems too little too late, I love the white aesthetic it's a nice contrast to Stefano's blue/red artsy world and Ted's fire and brimstone land, but it's only for the last short section with no new enemy types or stage gimmicks at all. They didn't capitalise on that white stuff, they could have had used more of it throughout(it already slows you down so have puddles appear, maybe have them as insta kill death traps), like have its presence become greater into the game that adds variants of regular zombies, like say re4 plagas or more so re6 dynamically mutating J'avo soldiers(those guys have insane variety).

Crow got discovered!

Can you actually fight the Watcher?

@birdman: yes, just aim for the red eye area otherwise no damage, and don't go near its body as it's a instant kill unique death animation.



This was likely on survivial, so it's probably tougher on nightmare. It's a bit silly to fight it I as you can easily run by if caught anyway.

Weird little fight, and also a shame that it doesn't reward you in any way possible for doing it since it is so easy to avoid. Would've been nice if you got some Gel out of it, then I would do it for sure, now I won't haha.

Just beat Stephano on my Nightmare Pistol only run, pretty fun so far. Really tense. Neat little detail is that crafting during a boss doesn't count as 'field crafting', which is a nice touch. So no extra resources needed!

Also I heard that if you get hit while wearing the Professional outfit you lose the tie. I'm not at home now so I can't test it, but is this true? And if so, do you get the tie back if you reload?

The reason I'm asking this it sounds an awful lot like the Kick Me Sign in Mikami's God Hand. In that game you got a piece of paper on your back that said "kick me", using super moves made you lose it forever. Beating the game with that sign on your back actually unlocked something. I wonder if it's the same here.

Neat little detail is that crafting during a boss doesn't count as 'field crafting', which is a nice touch. So no extra resources needed!
WHAT?

Just beat Stephano on my Nightmare Pistol only run, pretty fun so far.
How was Obscura by the stable field emitter? How many shots did Stefano take? Just a rough estimate if you weren't counting.

Also I heard that if you get hit while wearing the Professional outfit you lose the tie.
Wow. I haven't heard about this.

Yeah, first thing that came to my mind was Godhand.

> no field crafting during bosses
Yeah it caught me by surprise too, but it does make some sort of sense to give players that little bit of an edge in the ammo department. 

> stephano pistol only
I missed quite a few shots, but I think the finally tally was 40'ish bullets.

> Obscura
She was cake. You can just bait her to do stupid things. If you stand near one of those square tables you can just avoid her completely until she does an attack which misses and punish her. Really easy fight.

When the run is finished I'll make an edited video that includes the fun stuff and the bosses to give some insight, otherwise people have to sit through whole waves of footage.

> no field crafting
Yet...during the O'Neal boss it was field crafting. Hm. Might just be a Stefano bug then.

> O'Neal
Okay I finally figured out why people think this boss has so much HP, he's bugged. I just finished him Handgun only which took around 100 bullets (there are two infinitely respawning caches of 3 bullets). And I've found out what happens, but I don't really know how to avoid it. Generally speaking he has no hitbox when he is idle. Meaning if he doesn't know where you are, your shots will go right through him. If he's in a taunting animation, it goes right through him. It is such a weird design oversight, I have no clue how this went through testing. What's worse is if you freeze him during his idle animation he'll get frozen, but take no damage...great.

EDIT: Here is the footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXvIr-fD-Ag#t=52m

(52 minute mark)

Pretty sure that doesn't happen with harbingers though, who people also complain about having too much HP. I've shot them way outside of their range and they take damage. I can see the blood.

I put a full upgrade magnum clip into one when he DID see me and it didn't kill him and that was on survival, so it wasn't a case of me missing for some reason.

O'Neal might be the only one with this oversight, but I could be wrong.

What about smoke bolts? Can you damage him while he's blind? That counts as not knowing where you are right?

Weird, I didn't try the smoke grenade (I did find out you could just get him in a stealth loop thanks to Youtube...which sucks). I also watched Quizzle, not a big fan of him as a person (too shout'y for my liking) but he beat the game on Nightmare Knife Only (stealth and bottles allowed, and he 'skipped' the Flame Walk). Pretty intense to watch, and he really nailed some parts. Seeing him knife the two Keepers was intense. Stefano and Obscura were also pretty cool to watch as was the cabin fight.

I do have to note he was...quite sloppy at times but this was more due to the game than himself. Some fights were him just burning through spamming medkits faster than most people spend bullets while knifeing like a madman. The Cabin fight was done with pure luck it seems, which it is.

Interesting. Might watch that later.

I don't agree with skipping (I assume he used a sequence break or something?) anything as it defeats the purpose of undertaking such a challenge. We want to see how the knife does against everything the game throws at you. Unless it's legitimately impossible proceed, he should have done the fire walk part.

Did he knife any of the lava guys before this point? I believe there's at least one forced fight with them.

Yeah he knifed the triple encounter and some later fights. Though he did use bottles of course. He 'skipped' it by using the shotgun, he tried for hours and barely got halfway. At some points the arena gets so small he needs to use bottles but they enter in flame mode so he can't; and thus is overpowered and dies. Or they just kill his partner and they die. He eventually just went through with guns to see how many enemies there were and if it was possible, said no, asked the stream what they wanted because he did mention that with massive luck it could be doable (like them being really passive and not doing their charge attack), the chat said "skip this shit" and he moved on.

Hmm, sounds fair then.

I wonder if Saw Lady can be knifed? There's a part where you can get on top of a truck trailer, or maybe it's one of those storage containers. She jumps up, but you can just jump down immediately and she'll do the same. Maybe knife her as she jumps up?

Did this guy knife O'Neal? That would be a nightmare. Imagine how many slashes that would take. How about Laura? I know she has a slow attack that leaves her quite vulnerable. That one where she sort of falls toward you and claws you on the way down.

> Saw Lady
You mean The Guardian? Yeah she's really easy to knife, if I didn't value my time I would have on my handgun only run but I'm saving it until later. She takes nearly 20-30 minutes to get down which is pretty ridiculous. When you are standing next to her 'normal' arm, she'll do a turn punch to get you away. If you dodge that and run straight back to that arm you can knife it, and she'll do the turn punch again, voila, the loop is born.

> O'Neal
No he stealthed him. Knifing him would be a NIGHTMARE I'd imagine since he has a one hit kill melee attack and the recovery on his moves is very minor.

> Laura
He just used the switch twice to burn her alive.

I assume most know this, but in that area where the Guardian is walking the streets, there is a bus near the fences by those trains. If she knows you're in there, she'll jump on the roof and put her arm down through it. You can damage her arm but I've only shot it a few times. No idea if you can defeat her like this though.

I actually saw that animation a few times, really cool how much effort went into it. That said I never really went for it, I either ran from the fight or just nuked her hard. Really loving the game more with every attempt.

After this handgun run I'll do a no-upgrade Nightmare run to warm-up for Classic, then do Classic and then really looking forward to an NG+ fun run with infinite ammo of me just killing the world :D

It's nice this shipped as a complete game with no micro transactions or season pass dlc. Cheers Bethesda, I hope they somehow let tango make the games they want and not chasing trends, they have Mikami, a true game innovator.

Hey Roy when's the next EW2 stream? I'll pop in if I'm up.

Going through some personal stuff right now, so I'm not really in the mood for a dark and depressing game haha. I bought a Switch with Mario to keep me occupied ;p

God that game is amazing!

I'll let you know when I decide to jump back in!

We truly are the Evil Within 2.

Can you make a topic and post your impressions? Looks pretty fun.

Fun thing btw. Someone checked that easter-egg scene in Japanese. They say

" Hell no man, those guys are Psycho!!!"
" Yeah, tell me about it..I really need a Psycho Break" (the japanese title of the game is Psycho Break).

Hilarious haha!

And made a Mario topic.

Hahaha

That reminds me, I wonder what they say in the Japanese version of Lollipop Chainsaw. There's no way most of those jokes or references would work.