Tormented Souls 2 Review

With its unsettling backdrops and elaborate worldbuilding, Tormented Souls 2 whitethorn look like a modern fearfulness game, but don't fto that modern dressing fool you. At its halfway beats the blackened bosom of stone-cold classics similar Resident Evil and Silent Hill, with each the treats — and tricks — that some endeared maine to and enraged maine astir these formulaic endurance fearfulness games erstwhile they archetypal gained popularity. Fixed camera angles? Check. Tank controls? Check. Insanely analyzable puzzles and an adjacent much bizarre story, implicit with cheesy dialog and a manual prevention system? Check, check, check, and check. It makes Tormented Souls 2 a amazingly faithful homage, bringing backmost each the worldly I loved astir aged endurance fearfulness games… arsenic good arsenic galore of the things I loved to hate.

Tormented Souls 2 picks up close aft the events of its 2021 predecessor, but you don't person to person met the Walker sisters earlier to marque consciousness of this sequel. That’s partially due to the fact that it tells a standalone story, and partially due to the fact that it's truthful fantastical that thing makes consciousness anyway. Sure, you whitethorn person questions astir Caroline's fetching eyepatch, but each you truly request to cognize is she’s searching for answers astir her small sister Anna's terrifying visions and reality-bending drawings. For reasons that look to beryllium exclusively successful schlocky fearfulness tales, that reply seemingly sits determination successful the depths of a creepy convent nestled successful a far-flung location.

Before Caroline adjacent gets the accidental to motion disconnected her (exceedingly 90s) leather jacket, though, Anna goes missing, and it's up to the older sibling to some find her sister and fig retired what the hellhole is going connected earlier it's excessively late… with an accent connected the “hell” bit, naturally. As stories go, it's not unique, no, but the twists and turns of Tormented Souls 2's astir 20-hour run are delightfully over-the-top successful the aforesaid mode the archetypal Resident Evil games are. It’s packed with cheesy dialogue, funny spirit text, and immoderate genuinely bizarre encounters I couldn’t assistance but grin at. Caroline's enactment successful the distant municipality of Villa Hess volition instrumentality you to a fig of wonderfully grim places, including a processing plant, spooky school, abandoned mall, bunker, and the sprawling convent you commencement disconnected in, keeping the creepy environments feeling fresh.

And those environments are truthful detailed! Stuffed with involvement and plentifulness of lore, Villa Hess and its surroundings are specified fascinating, atmospheric places to explore. You ne'er cognize erstwhile a cardinal point oregon a adjuvant instrumentality whitethorn beryllium secreted distant successful a hidden country somewhere, truthful it's ever champion to support your curiosity piqued. While your probe is sometimes interrupted by a bladed demon oregon shambling zombie, you'll find that enemies person a inclination to enactment dormant successful Tormented Souls 2 — erstwhile you've cleared retired an area, you're usually near to research astatine your leisure. With small much than a flickering candle to usher the way, though, it's a small excessively casual to miss things; I've been caught retired a mates of times by overlooking a cardinal hint oregon item, adjacent successful areas I thought I'd examined beauteous closely.

As is seemingly the instrumentality for old-school endurance horror, the much you play, the much you'll find yourself opening up caller routes to aged places, providing entree to rooms and full areas that were antecedently blocked off. I fishy the backtracking volition irk immoderate — there's a batch of it, peculiarly aboriginal connected — but arsenic the levels and fetch-quests are well-designed and usually rewarding, I couldn't begrudge it. That said, there's a crushed fixed camera angles and vessel controls are considered relics of the past. I grew up playing the games Tormented Souls 2 pays homage to (Resident Evil, Silent Hill 3, Parasite Eve, Alone successful the Dark), but moving astir Villa Hess is frustrating adjacent erstwhile determination isn't a demon connected your tail, with choky corridors and dormant ends that marque getting from 1 broadside of a gathering to the different unduly long-winded.

Add successful Caroline's fearfulness of the dark: she'll frost and commencement to hyperventilate if plunged into acheronian for adjacent a divided second, dying wholly if you permission her determination excessively long. You can’t adjacent enactment distant your lighter to shatter a porcelain cookware oregon smash unfastened a woody crate unless there's an ambient airy root nearby… which determination precise often isn't. The lighter definite does adhd to the atmosphere, though, which is astir continually tense and unnerving. As the superior root of airy rather often, you'll person to proactively measurement into a country to illuminate what, if anything, is hiding successful the shadows, which inevitably means unwittingly getting up adjacent and idiosyncratic with the denizens skulking astir the place.

It each falls isolated a spot erstwhile determination is thing hiding successful the dark, though. Tormented Souls 2's combat isn't clumsy arsenic overmuch arsenic it is enraging. The reliance connected Caroline's lighter means you're often unarmed erstwhile thing lunges astatine you, and the fixed camera angles and stiff quality question marque it harder than it should beryllium to retreat oregon make a small distance. Caroline protects herself with a scope of acquired and improvised weapons, from a shotgun to a nail gun. Some of them tin beryllium upgraded to amended their complaint of occurrence oregon reload speed, but they're inactive dilatory to usage and hard to wield accurately successful a panic. I cognize it's benignant of a genre normal to guarantee we consciousness anemic and underpowered, but this could've been achieved done scarcer ammo oregon by throwing much enemies astatine us; inefficient weapons and fixed cameras don't ramp up the hostility arsenic overmuch arsenic drawback the immersion entirely.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that jankiness follows you into brag fights. One of the archetypal you'll encounter, a elephantine nun, stomps astir the country trying to batter you with a gigantic alloy cross. But successful that 1 azygous room, determination are astatine slightest three antithetic fixed camera angles, which means you whitethorn find yourself inadvertently sprinting towards your foe if the camera shifts portion trying to enactment region betwixt you. This wouldn't beryllium truthful atrocious if your shotgun held much than 2 shots astatine a clip oregon if the nun flinched with each hit, but she'll support galloping similar an aggravated rhino, which made the camera consciousness similar the existent brag I was fighting.

Thankfully, for each underwhelming brag combat you're forced to endure, you'll hap crossed a bully half-dozen puzzles which confuse and delight successful adjacent measure. I ne'er felt person to an aged Resident Evil oregon Silent Hill crippled than trying to fig retired however to unfastened a door, oregon decode a cipher, oregon prise unfastened the jaws of a dormant shark for reasons I inactive don't rather understand. Often profoundly cryptic, maddeningly illogical, oregon wholly unsolvable due to the fact that I stupidly missed a hint somewhere, these puzzles were precisely what I privation from a crippled similar this, each the mode down to the mini-puzzles that inquire you to harvester circumstantial items successful your inventory. Yes, I'll admit 1 oregon 2 (or five) encephalon teasers genuinely stumped maine for an embarrassing magnitude of time, but if that isn't old-school endurance horror, past what is?