I've been playing this game for about an hour and a half, and so far I'm thoroughly disappointed. There's no more inventory and the lamp is now infinite (no more tinderboxes either), so the tension of trying to find more oil or solving puzzles with inventory items is now gone. Notes feel extremely irrelevant, as they only seem to serve the purpose of showing you small children's diary extracts or sheet music instead of guiding you through levels and puzzles like in The Dark Descent. The sanity meter feels extremely weak compared to the first game; You don't lose sanity in the dark, there aren't the cool effects such as roosterroaches crawling over the screen or your character collapsing, and every time your screen goes blurry it's only because of a set event. The graphics are frankly disappointing, technically and art-style wise; considering the wait we've had and a bigger budget/team, you would have thought they'd make everything look nicer, but the only thing that's noticeably different is the arm that holds the lantern. Some the graphics look out of place, art style wise. The loading screens, for instance, seem to glare with white when the game is supposed to be dreary and dark, which is rather off putting. The Chinese Room have basically turned what could have been a great game into horror Dear Esther by making a stripped down, basic version of the first game. It has it's scary moments, and the atmosphere is somewhat fearful, but at the end of the day fans of the original will be disappointed, but new players may see something in it.
