YMMV / Siren 2

• Demonic Spiders: The evolved Yamibito are especially a pain to deal with as they somehow do not take any damage from the front, and must be attacked from behind in order to damage them. Because they don't always flinch to your attacks, they may end up turning to face you and become immune to further attacks, unless you stun them with the flashlight first and then try to get behind them. However, their ability to resist attacks from the front only works if they have seen you, making it much easier to snipe them from afar, although the game doesn't tell you this.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Remember what happened to Ichiko before the events of the game? Now look at what happened in South Korea about nine years after the game came out.
• Signature Scene: Yuri unbuttoning her blouse to reveal a nightmarish human face as well as the followup scene where she merges with Mother, devours Shu and unleashes the Yamirei are the first things most people think of when they remember Siren 2.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Siren 2 fixes pretty much everything that people complained about in the first game, namely improving the combat, making the difficulty more fair and making the secondary objectives far less obtuse.
• That One Level: Soji's last level. You start with a weak melee weapon if you didn't find the nail and hammer for the nail bat in the last level, while there's an enemy with an assault rifle right at the start, who can and will shoot you right away on Hard mode. Taking him down for his rifle is pretty much only possible with the Nail Bat, and at the very end is Yambito Misawa who, if you don't shoot him In the Back before he gets alerted for extra damage, can take every single bullet from the assault rifle and still have a bit of health left, forcing you to rifle-melee him to death - and even then he revives in a second, forcing you to just grab his rifle and run for it. Oh, and if you alert him but escape? He combs every hiding spot in his section, which is almost impossible to avoid on hard mode. He's arguably the toughest boss in the game for this reason since, while taking him out is technically optional, it's very hard to avoid doing on Hard mode.
• The Woobie:
  • Shu, Ichiko, and Shigeru. Also any of the women who are forced to become Mother's avatars.
    • As a child, Shu Mikami loses his father, his new mother figure Kanae, and the village where he grew up, as well going blind, all in one day. He grows up to become a famous author, but then returns to Yamajima to try and understand what happened to him — only to have to relive it all again. Hunted through the village, he loses his seeing-eye dog Tsukasa when the dog pushes him out from under a collapsing roof, and is 'reunited' with Kanae — who turns out to be part of Mother, who absorbs him, which allows her to free herself from the underworld and begin her bid to break through to the real world.
    • Schoolgirl Ichiko Yagura, or rather her Simulacrum, is also very pitiful. The real Ichiko turns out to have died when the ferry Bright Win was struck by a tsunami, where her drowned corpse was then used by Otoshigo to make a Simulacra in Ichiko's image. Ichiko's Simluacrum then wakes up inside the abandoned ferry and mistakes Ichiko's memories as her own, and is soon rescued by Shigeru Fujita. Then Otoshigo's influence slowly begins to take over the Simulacrum, starting with her murder of the kindly officer, driving the Simulacra into despair over what she had done. Eventually, the Simulacrum loses all sense of free will and goes on a mindless killing spree to find Mother, only to fail and fall off the tower she resides in as it collapses. The Simulacrum then collapses from her wounds and expires, but not before crying out to Mother one last time.
    • Perennially unlucky Shigeru Fujita, who left the island to pursue his dream of becoming a policeman, which caused the other residents to view him and his parents with scorn. His job with the police has seen him repeatedly demoted, to the point where in the present he's back to working a beat cop at the age of 52 and has had to take at least one pay cut to avoid being fired. His wife left him, and his daughter writes to tell him he's an embarrassment. The only reason he's on the island is to search for a missing woman — who he never actually finds. Instead he meets Ichiko, and spends most of his missions trying to get her off the island to safety... until she stabs him to death while under the influence of Otoshigo. His last words in life are apologizing to his daughter for disappointing her. In a sense his ending is still happier than Ichiko's, however — as he was born on the island, there's literally a stake with his name on it that can be used to kill his Kou Yamibito self, freeing his soul.