Just to quickly recap, I love the first D, even though the title is Dreadful. See what I did there? ... I'll see myself out. But no, I really hate the title. Trying to look this game up on a search engine is an experience all its own. Still, the gameplay, the atmosphere, and the slow, creepy pace that you go at, it all comes up as a heartpounding experience with the lights out and the house empty. It's a short game, usually around an hour and a half if you know what you're doing.
D2, on the other hand is a complicated matter in itself. The real problem is that there was almost no attempt to pin it with the first game and what attempt there is is lost in an entire barrage of cringeworthy plant transformations and... uhhh zombie... things. It really seems like they didn't make any attempt toward setting the same unsettling atmosphere. They seemed more intetested in adding combat and item pickups for health and stats.
It's obvious from the get go that they wanted a Resident Evil clone to piggyback on the success. The problem is that D already had its own strengths to draw upon and its own lore to expand upon. Instead of visiting a nightmarish world of haunted interiors, we get a snowy thundra and random encounters while wielding a semiautomatic weapon. In and of itself, this wouldn't be a problem, but this is D we're talking about.
What once was a puzzle solver is now a knockoff game that tries at the very least. Some of the mechanics are okay but most of the time, they end up adding nothing and taking away from the solid identity it started with.
You could have gone so much more in depth with the character study aspect of the first game. The idea of going into the mind of a psychotic killer had all of the potential and they drew upon that so well in the first game. They could have built upon that way better with a bigger budget but decided to mine gold where everyone else was already mining and some were doing it better.
Think about another two characters. They could have been family members or one could have been a victim of the maniacal other and something similar could have happened. Think about going through a larger mind palace with different themes and different horrors to face with your wits and quick reflexes. D2 did none of this.
What the sequel did was less than stellar. It was not an outright bad game, but it also did very little with its own concept. The part where you shoot the gun at the creatures was clunky, despite the fact that it was implemented in a more experimental way. It shows that they were trying and it was admittedly better than trying to shoot with tank controls.
There was some potential here that seems flat out untapped and that's a real shame. It would have been nice to have a sequel that delved into the idea that the first D had. While D2 wasn't a total failure (it does have its fans), I can't help but feel an overlying sense of disappointment. I never played the third or fourth game but I've heard I'm not missing a lot. If you're a fan of D2, believe me when I say that I don't hate it. I just wished for a bit less Resident Evil and a lot more Dread.
