YMMV / Outlast II

• Alternative Character Interpretation: There's some evidence to believe that Blake is a sexually suppressed gay man. He has had a 4-month long Sexless Marriage with Lynn and Jessica's crush on him didn't develop into their later years on the account of her death, their age, as well as the fact that he loved her as a friend. Blake is constantly haunted by a hallucination of Father Loutermilch calling him a "diseased cocksucker" and telling him he's "not evil, just confused". The main vision of Blake is that he's sexually dysfunctional due to his warped and fearful view of sex brought upon by his experience with Jessica and Father Loutermilch. However, it's not hard to believe that Blake suppressed his sexuality due to his Catholic upbringing and his true sexuality started emerging in his adulthood.
• Awesome Music: Marta's Theme is considered one of the best tracks of the game.
• Best Level Ever: Difficult as they are, a lot of players regard the school segments as the most memorable parts of the game. This is attributed to the segments exploring Blake's backstory, the setting being completely barren save for an enemy that pops up randomly, and the more Psychological Horror approach compared to the rest of the game.
• Broken Base:
  • In a similar vein to the first game, the sequel divided fans due to its depressing outcome and lack of firm connection to the first installment. Some people have defended it by saying it stays true to the formula and fits the tone of the game, while others have stated that it just makes everything you’ve done feel pointless.
  • Are the new mechanics more realistic than automatic healing and infinite stamina, making the game more challenging and immersive, or are they unnecessary headaches to make the game even more frustrating than it already is? In addition, unlike the first installment, the game forces you to film a scene for a set amount of time before it can be added to to the archives (allowing Blake time to narrate it) and some are permanently missable if you don't get your camera up at exactly the right time.
  • The open-world concept of the game. Supporters enjoy the atmosphere and challenge in contrast to the first game, which had a much more straightforward level design, while detractors argue that it just served to increase the bloat of the game by forcing the player to repeatedly trial-and-error every single chase and mission.
• Base-Breaking Character: Blake Langermann, the protagonist of the game, has gotten some of this. Many felt that he has lower characterization than the silent protagonists of the first game, and therefore makes him less engaging. Others feel that it’s what makes him work, as you are meant to feel like you’re in the same hell that he’s in.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fate of Jessica Gray. To wit, in his hallucinations, Blake is repeatedly sent back in time to his old Catholic school the night Jessica died. He is subjected to so many images of Jessica hanging that you'd swear the game developers just learned what a Red Herring is. Stalking the darkened school is a mysterious suited man, likely a teacher, who eventually appears as a nude Humanoid Abomination with a dozen arms and an Overly-Long Tongue, who attacks Blake in extremely invasive and lascivious ways. Hmm... What could it all mean?
• Cliché Storm: The game uses basically every horror trope there is, with varying degrees of humanoid abominations (ranging from Body Horror monsters to Ambiguously Human), tons of jump scares, cat scares, no way to defend yourself, a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane situation, an ambiguous Downer Ending, having no way to contact the outside world or escape, implausibly strong killers, an evil influence, a main character with a Dark Secret, and a ridiculous amount of almost over-the-top Gorn (such as the piles of dead babies for a start), far more than even the first game. Although these were all traits present to some degree in the first game, it's taken up to eleven in this one.
• Contested Sequel: While positively received, the sequel still garnered mixed reactions from fans of the first game. For the most part, players praised the more open-ended outdoor settings as opposed to the enclosed asylum setting, the psychological drama approach that allowed Blake's character to be fleshed out, and the overall gloomier atmosphere that increases the sense of anxiety. Others, however, criticized the sequel's increased difficulty, lack of changes to the core gameplay, and ramping up the already depressing tone of the original.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Blake having to cut down a suicide victim to take their rope? Dark. Him dryly thanking the victim as he removes the noose from their corpse? Darkly hilarious.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Much like Eddie Gluskin before her, some fans absolutely love Val of all characters, completely ignoring the fact that she's a Serial Rapist who derives sexual pleasure from killing babies and instead often talk about how beautiful she is or (somehow) Woobie-fying her.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite only appearing sporadically through the game, Marta has become surprisingly popular with the fandom, mostly for her character design, Hidden Depths, and appearing to be one of the few main antagonists who isn't a serial rapist.
  • Ethan is also quite popular too, by virtue of being the only non-playable character so far in the Outlast universe to be a genuine Nice Guy.
  • There's one nameless hostile in the Genesis section that only appears on one map, can be entirely bypassed, and is only hostile when the door to his house is opened. However, he's coded to be so ridiculously fast that he can kill you as soon as you're finished opening the door and will chase after you with lightning speed (and even kill you through walls), leading many skilled players to attempt to troll, outwit, and outrun him, even playfully building lore and history for him.
• Faux Symbolism: The school segments have quite a lot of focus on blood, which is bizarre considering they center around Jessica Gray, who died via relatively very bloodless Neck Snap. Ultimately it's just to make the school segments creepier.
• Franchise Original Sin: As noted under It's the Same, Now It Sucks!, the game's lack of offensive options shifts fully into Idiot Ball territory. The first game and DLC justified the lack of combat by having genetically-enhanced Mooks with Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability and a final boss who was essentially impervious to any kind of physical attack. With the exception of Marta, the enemies here are physically human, and very unhealthy too, so it makes no sense for Blake not to scrounge up some kind of weapon. (Fortunately, unlike Miles, Blake at least has the ability to shove enemies out of his way to escape instead of simply raising his hands in defense.
• Heartwarming Moments
  • Blake's love and devotion to Lynn. Going through absolute hell just to save her.
  • As disturbing as Blake's rape at the hands of Val is, he spends almost all his time screaming for Lynn. Seconds away from being raped and he still cares more about his wife than himself.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: One of the many criticisms of the game is its increased difficulty. The more open-ended structure of the game can leave the player blindly running around without knowing exactly where to go, let alone escape from enemies (some of which are now equipped with flashlights). Combine that with less hiding spots, a Sprint Meter, and the ability to regenerate your health being removed completely.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • One of the larger criticisms of the game is that it doesn't do enough to change up the core gameplay. Like the first game, you have to flee or hide when confronted with an enemy, and given the more open, outdoor setting and comparative lack of hiding spots, expect to do a lot of running around blindly along with trial and error gameplay.
  • The lack of any offensive options. The first game and DLC had genetically-enhanced super soldiers for Mooks, so it made sense for Miles and Waylon to run and hide rather than try to fight opponents they had no chance of beating. Here (with the exception of Marta), the Mooks are sick and/or deformed townsfolk, so it's unfathomable why Blake didn't pick up one of the numerous potential weapons (such as saws, machetes, and guns) to at least defend himself. Val is the best example of this, as by the time you fight her she's naked, alone, armed with nothing but a pair of torches, and is waist deep in water. Blake wouldn't even need to touch her, here- all he'd have to do is splash her with water, and out goes her torches leaving her completely blind and defenseless. On a similar note, the Scalled verge on being too sick to stand, so they should logically be easy to fend off.
• Moral Event Horizon: One of the priests in Blake's Sunday school, Father Loutermilch, is revealed to have been the true cause of Jessica's death via molesting her, breaking her neck on a staircase, and staging her death to look like a suicide.
• Narm: Many have found the game difficult to take very seriously. Since it often attempts to pull so much shockingly gory and controversial content without ever letting up, some find it kind of humorous in a Black Comedy Refuge in Audacity kind of way, which may ruin the tension of scenes that are genuinely meant to disturb and horrify. Special mention goes to Blake's pathetic crying and jibbering after Lynn dies. While you can tell the actor is trying, the game's first-person perspective and general apathy most players have gained by that point just makes it come off as awkward.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: You no longer regenerate health on your own. Instead, you have to collect and use bandages (which take a while to use) to restore your health. It's also a lot harder to find places to hide, as the place has wider space and enemies can use their flashlights to search for you in the dark (though they will often find you in the pitch darkness regardless, and move their paths to draw closer to Blake even when the player moved undetected). Furthermore, enemies are much stronger, faster, and quieter than in the first game, and Blake makes much more noise than Miles does when sneaking or running. The newly added Sprint Meter doesn't help either. Expect to die a lot more while trying to figure out how to progress.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The game has a departure in mechanics from the first two installments, forcing the player to use bandages instead of Outlast's automatic rapid healing, introducing a stamina mechanic (and hamstringing player stamina when they are bleeding), and forcing the player to check their pocket for batteries instead of having their amount available whenever the camera is running. Furthermore, filmed events require Blake to keep the camera in place for a set amount of time and they, like paper documents, no longer have notes that can be viewed automatically or pause the game. Some praised the changes for adding a more complicated and realistic atmosphere to the game, unlike the unlimited stamina of the seemingly superhuman Miles and Waylon, while others criticized the changes for adding bloat and tedium, and making some challenges needlessly more complicated than they already are.
• Shock Fatigue: The game is criticized for being inferior to the original game partly for this reason. It tries to amp up the violence, gore, and bleakness far greater than the already very violent, gory, and bleak story and visuals of the first game, but does so to such a degree that it quickly tires and gets repetitive after the first few hours, and starts getting unintentionally silly due to how hard the game is trying to disturb the player, with a ton of dead children and graphic rape (including things like literal piles of rotting baby corpses you have to wade through, a sex slave chained up and covered in feces, two first-person scenes of being sexually violated by a hallucination demon, and the main character's backstory involving a child killer/rapist Karma Houdini that has practically no connection to the main story). By the time the protagonist's wife dies, rendering the whole game All for Nothing, players will probably be apathetic to her fate, or angered they wasted their time on this misery, rather than saddened by the loss, because at this point absolutely nothing has gone even remotely well and the hallucinations have started to make the story hard to even understand, so a depressing outcome was incredibly predictable.
• Squick:
  • The description of the scene that lead to the game being (almost) banned in Australia is pretty nasty: The player is sexually assaulted by a monster at a demonic orgy. In first person. Twice.
  • The chained-up rape victim in the underground cellar is mostly a tear jerker, but the fact that she and her cot are soiled with feces leads to the most disgusting scene in the game.
  • All the mass graves of children of Blake finds. Most media won't even touch a dead child, but Blake has to wade through dozens.
  • The nude, masturbating Humanoid Abomination stalking you in the school segments.
  • The birth scene at the end is rendered with a disgustingly dedicated level of detail.
• That One Achievement:
  • Beating the game on Insane difficulty, where you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder and there are no checkpoints whatsoever. While the first game had the exact same difficulty, the sequel is far more challenging due to its longer length^note the first game could be completed in less than three hours. The sequel, on the other hand, is double that, increased Trial-and-Error Gameplay, and several bugs that cause enemies to get stuck in areas that are required to explore.
  • "Messiah" requires the player to beat Insane difficulty without ever reloading the battery for your camcorder at any point. Beating the game on Insane mode is a challenge by itself, and considering that 99% of the game is in pitch black darkness... yeah, good luck getting that achievement.
• That One Level:
  • The forest segment. There's hard-to-see Scalled crawling along the ground ready to creep up on Blake and grab his ankles, then Laird the crack shot (despite it being both foggy and nighttime) shows up. The only saving grace is that his arrows aren't a One-Hit Kill (depending on which difficulty you're playing on).
  • The school segments. Despite the more enclosed setting, Trial-and-Error Gameplay are really in effect since there is no set objective beyond trying to figure out how to leave. Thus, you're just kinda just stuck exploring the school until you can get a clue on how to proceed. On top of that, the school is mostly in complete darkness, meaning that you'll be going through a lot of batteries each time. Then there's the eventual appearance of the Stalker, an enemy who not only tends to pop up when you least expect it, but can only be evaded by running away from it. The only upside is that his pop-ups aren't randomized.
  • The mine cart sequence with Marta. Blake can only push the cart slowly, and Marta tends to not only hang out around the cart, but she can also often spot Blake even when he's hiding in complete darkness. Given her extremely fast speed and ability to kill Blake with one hit, a lot of players struggle here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A good chunk of players felt that the Jessica and Loutermilch subplot had a lot of potential that wasn't utilized enough. Not only do the flashbacks not wind up leading to a plot that intersects with the main game at any point but neither Jessica or Loutermilch have much background that really gets explored outside the flashbacks, making them entirely incidental.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the major criticisms leveled towards the game, from the tacky, excessive use of rape in many forms, to and from men and women, to the murder of innocent children. All the gratuitous gore and violence quickly starts to feel tiresome instead of scary. This reaches its logical conclusion in the ending, where the protagonist's journey to save his wife proves to be All for Nothing and Loutermilch apparently got away with his crimes. The original game at least counterbalanced its bleak ending with Whistleblower, but since no such DLC exists here, many find the main game to just be pointless misery.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The sensitive microphone mechanic that allows you to hear through walls and over long distances is poorly used — while it's an interesting mechanic and it lets you keep track of enemy locations easily, the lack of truly open environments to explore in mean that it won't be used to it's absolute fullest as the game wants you to just run rather than outmaneuver them. The only times in the story it's used are for puzzles.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Val, the leader of the Heretics. She is modeled after and voiced by s female, but her breasts and genitalia are clearly made of mud (and examining the character model reveals what looks to be a penis under the mud ), is referred to as a man by Knoth and stated to be incapable of becoming pregnant, suggesting Val is either transgender, or an infertile/sterile woman and Knoth is mocking her and insinuating she's not a "true" woman.
• Win Back the Crowd: The Outlast 2 demo addresses, at least in part, some of the criticisms of the earlier games:
  • The setting is all new (a small rural town in Arizona) and incorporates new mechanics.
  • A number of female characters are introduced, allowing more representation from both genders.
• The Woobie: Both Lynn and Blake.