And now I've beaten Evil Within 2.
Yeah, this one is a lot better than the first one. It's not perfect, mind you. I don't think it reaches the highs of Resident Evil's best games, but it is still better than some of the less impressive mainline RE titles. I appreciate that they're trying to do something different here with the semi-open world, and it feels like they took most of the criticism of the first game to heart and made a good faith effort to fix what didn't work. That said, the open nature of the game means it doesn't build atmosphere as well as the first one did. I would also say the monsters and the villain of the first game were better, although this one definitely had a much better story overall and Sebastian is much more relatable as a character than he was before. It wasn't ball-crushingly hard either, but nor was it too easy. For a first time playthrough, the difficulty was just right. Some of the controls still feel just a little bit wonky, but I eventually got used to it. It also kind of feels like the devs aren't expecting to make an Evil Within 3, because this game ties up the major plot points in a way that makes it pretty hard to continue. I'm not saying it's impossible, but they would definitely have to go in a totally different direction if they do make a direct sequel. I still wouldn't call this game a survival horror classic like RE4 or Silent Hill 2, but it's a big step in the right direction and I would like to see this series continue to improve.