What an experience! After the sour taste left in my mouth by the ending of the first game, I started this without the same enthusiasm. And it took me by surprise in style!

I have beaten this game in Movie Night mode (couch co-op) with my girlfriend, but as in the first game, there's also online co-op (a completely different experience, where you play simultaneously instead of waiting turns) and solo.

This is so different from the first one. From the beginning, you are brought into a dark story. There's no real preparation for the action. Some minutes after launching the game, and you get shocked. And it never slows down. It keeps it like that and even gets bigger. There are so many feelings I had throughout this game, and I will try to explain in this review why I feel like this game is a masterpiece.

The set of characters, the story, the storytelling style, and where the action takes place have nothing in common with the first game. The set of characters feels like something taken from a Stranger Things story. Each with its own characteristics and personality. You start pretty soon to care about their well-being. They feel real. Their emotion, their reaction to what is going on and everything around them—amazing. Then the story and storytelling—so much mystery about what is going on, so much intrigue, the witch trials... so much sadness. We then have the city itself: Little Hope. The atmosphere there, the mystery, the horror factor, and most importantly, the fog! All of this reminds me of Silent Hill. Even the art of the bad stuff (to avoid spoiling) feels like it was taken from an artwork book from Silent Hill.

The graphics are as amazing as they were in the first game, but without any visual glitches whatsoever. The playthrough again took around six hours and something (with exploration and taking our time to see everything as thoroughly as possible), but this time it felt like a full experience! I did not feel like the game needed more at all. It answered and gave everything it should have in that time. The ending broke my heart; it was fulfilling, and I would change nothing!

Going back to the horror factor and the way the game kept us on our toes the whole playthrough, it really was something. It never gave us a moment of feeling safe or uninterested. The Silent Hill-like vibe and atmosphere, the fact that something could happen at every interaction or corner...

For achievement hunters: I am unsure how many playthroughs are needed to complete this, but I will get back to it and do it in the future, and will then update this.

Yeah, I really loved this game. After the ending of the last game, this game took us by surprise. No more words can describe how big of a lasting impression this game has left on us. I highly recommend it to any choices-matter adventure, co-op, horror, or mystery/thriller fans out there!

Spoiler Alert!

This isn't my first Dark Pictures Anthology game, so I had a general idea of what to expect. However, this particular episode was a bit disappointing overall.

The themes of witchcraft, time manipulation, and doppelgängers set up an intriguing premise. The story starts off strong, but unfortunately it loses momentum gradually. The prologue involves a tragic house fire that claims the lives of a family, and in the present day, a group of students and professors - who all look the same like the family members - find themselves trapped in a foggy town called Little Hope after a car crash. They're haunted by visions from the middle age, witness their body doubles ugly deaths. So, the story is about a same group of people facing tragedy across three separate timelines.

To make the gameplay easier, I lowered the difficulty by disabling the timely decisions and QTEs, so I mostly just had to do a left click to avoid dangers. However, some moments felt jarring: (1) I asked one character to cautiously hold up the gun, yet still ended up killing another character. (2) John died because he wasn't "brave" enough. These moments didn’t make sense.

There are several moments where you're forced to decide who to save when two characters are in life-threatening danger. The problem is, there’s no clear right answer. It's not always the best choice to save the girls and assuming the guy will survive. There are also instances where the game asks you to follow a sound or movement, or simply ask you to whether go left or right. With minimal information, these decisions are blind guesses and are frustrating.

The walkthrough felt lacking and the ending is confusing. I couldn't figure out whether the little girl or the priest in the medieval timeline was the true villain, and I was left uncertain about what happened to the bus driver in the present. Maybe a second playthrough would clear things up, but I’m not sure I’ll try again.

This game is not awful, but I definitely prefer other games in the Dark Pictures Anthology. This one didn’t live up to my expectations.

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Marvel Rivals

As is with most of these games, your choices don't matter much at all. The story wasn't that interesting. The writing and acting were mediocre at best. Having played more of their games I sadly think this is all they'll ever be and it's not worth the price they asked for.

klaaszz

I love all of these games, a bit glitchy but over all a good game

Great story! i loved it!

I just finished playing this game with a friend, our third Dark Pictures game together and I have to say, not only is it just as bad as the others, but in every possible way, it's even worse.

The first hour and a half is nothing more than a slow, drawn out walking simulator, filled with cheap, repetitive jump scares and painfully awkward dialogue. It does improve slightly later on, but the overall premise is so uninteresting that I found it impossible to stay engaged. And then there’s the ending—if you can even call it that. It felt like something written by a gradeschooler: “And then he woke up.”

That’s right, everything that happened in the game was ultimately meaningless. The supposed "character development" (if you can even call it that), the witch trials, all of it-completely pointless. And just like Man of Medan, the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying, cutting to black in an instant without answering a single question the player might have.

To make matters worse, the game is a buggy mess. The cutscenes, which should at least provide some immersion, are riddled with unnecessary jump cuts that make everything feel choppy. Some of these cuts are so bad that they ruin any tension the game is trying to build. There were times when I’d just be stuck staring at a forest for several minutes, waiting for my friend’s dialogue and cutscene to finish. It completely killed the pacing and drained any sense of immersion or tension the game was trying to build. Moments that were supposed to be suspenseful instead felt like I was just waiting for the game to catch up.

Overall, it was a frustrating experience, and at this point, I doubt I’ll be giving another Dark Pictures game a chance.

10/10 one of my favorite games from this series. The horror, the story telling, the plot twists! 100% recommend!