There are very few modern horror games that truly understand what made classic survival horror special. Not the surface-level stuff. Not the fixed cameras, not the tank controls, not the aesthetic cosplay of PS2-era grime and gothic corridors. I mean the feeling. The slow psychological pressure. The constant sense that something is wrong. The quiet dread that settles in your stomach long before anything actually happens.
Tormented Souls 2 gets it.
This isn’t just a sequel. It’s a statement. A confident, unapologetic declaration that slow, oppressive, puzzle-driven survival horror still has a place in modern gaming, not as nostalgia bait, but as a genuinely effective form of fear.
Theres ghosts in this area who can get fucked.
From the moment the game begins, there’s an unmistakable shift in tone compared to the first game. The world feels heavier. The atmosphere is thicker. The spaces feel more oppressive. Everything from the lighting design to the audio layering feels engineered to keep you uneasy at all times. There is never a moment of comfort. Never a moment where you feel safe. Never a moment where the game lets you breathe.
And that is exactly what makes it so effective.
This sequel understands the identity of Tormented Souls perfectly, and then pushes it further. Where the original was a love letter to classic survival horror, Tormented Souls 2 feels like a fully formed evolution of that idea. It doesn’t just replicate old design philosophies. It refines them, modernises them just enough, and then leans hard into what made them powerful in the first place.
In my original Tormented Souls review, I called the game a deliberate throwback and an underrated masterpiece, praising its commitment to classic horror design and atmosphere. Tormented Souls 2 feels like the developers taking that foundation and saying, “Right, now let’s really hurt them.”
I hate this guy so much
The atmosphere here is relentless. This game made me feel creeped out constantly. Not occasionally. Not in specific moments. Constantly. The kind of unease that never switches off. Corridors feel too long. Rooms feel too empty. Sound design is used with surgical precision. Distant creaks, low industrial hums, muffled mechanical noises that feel more like breathing than machinery. Even silence feels threatening.
There’s a fantastic, ever-present sense of impending dread that follows you everywhere. You always feel like something is about to happen, even when nothing does. And that’s the brilliance of it. The game doesn’t rely on jumpscares to make you afraid. It relies on anticipation. On tension. On atmosphere. On making your own imagination do the work.
Enemy encounters are handled with restraint, and that’s a good thing. Combat never becomes the focus. It never becomes empowering. You’re not clearing rooms and feeling dominant. You’re surviving. Scraping through. Managing resources. Making decisions that feel stressful rather than satisfying. Every encounter feels like a risk assessment rather than an action sequence.
The environments themselves deserve special praise. They feel hostile. Not just visually, but structurally. Layouts are intentionally confusing, interconnected in ways that feel logical but disorienting. You’re constantly looping back on yourself, unlocking shortcuts, opening new paths that feel earned rather than handed to you. It creates that classic survival horror rhythm of tension, relief, and renewed fear.
An impending sense of doom
The puzzles are where Tormented Souls 2 becomes more divisive, and honestly, it’s one of the few real criticisms I have. Some of the puzzles are genuinely brilliant, layered, and satisfying in that old-school way that makes you feel clever rather than guided. Others, however, cross the line into being a little obnoxious. Not difficult in an intellectually rewarding sense, but obscure in a way that feels deliberately obtuse.
There are moments where the game leans too hard into puzzle cruelty, where solutions feel less like logical problem-solving and more like trial-and-error frustration. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but it does interrupt the flow at points, pulling you out of the immersion and into problem-solving mode rather than fear mode. In a game this atmosphere-driven, that friction is noticeable.
Still, when the puzzles land, they really land. When they work, they enhance the dread rather than disrupt it. They force you to stay in the space longer. To absorb the environment. To sit in the tension instead of escaping it. And that’s where Tormented Souls 2 is at its strongest, when progression itself feels stressful.
Narratively, the game continues the series’ strength in environmental storytelling. It doesn’t overexplain. It doesn’t spoon-feed. It lets the world speak for itself. Notes, visual cues, environmental details, and unsettling imagery all combine to build a narrative that feels fragmented, disturbing, and intentionally incomplete. You’re never given the full picture, and that’s the point.
The tone is bleak, oppressive, and emotionally cold. There’s no warmth here. No relief. No comfort characters. No emotional safety net. It’s isolation horror at its core, the kind that makes you feel small, trapped, and vulnerable rather than heroic.
What impresses me most is how confidently Tormented Souls 2 commits to its identity. It doesn’t try to appeal to everyone. It doesn’t dilute its systems. It doesn’t modernise itself into something safer or more accessible at the cost of atmosphere. It knows exactly what kind of game it is, and it refuses to apologise for it.
In many ways, it feels like the natural continuation of what I wrote in my original review, that Tormented Souls wasn’t just a nostalgia project, but a deliberate recreation of what classic survival horror felt like . This sequel takes that philosophy and sharpens it into something even more oppressive, more confident, and more emotionally uncomfortable.
Puzzles in this game are just macabre
Tormented Souls 2 doesn’t just scare you. It unsettles you. It lingers. It creeps under your skin and stays there. It creates a constant psychological pressure that never truly releases. Even when you’re safe, you don’t feel safe. Even when nothing is happening, you’re waiting for something to happen.
It isn’t perfect. The puzzles can be a little obnoxious at times. Some sections flirt with frustration more than fear. But those issues are small compared to what the game achieves overall.
This is survival horror done with intent. With purpose. With identity.
Tormented Souls 2 is oppressive, cruel, beautifully atmospheric, and relentlessly unsettling. It understands dread better than most modern horror games. It understands tension. It understands restraint. And most importantly, it understands that fear doesn’t come from spectacle. It comes from atmosphere, anticipation, and psychological pressure.
A 9/10 doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from impact.
And Tormented Souls 2 leaves a mark.