Since the only other review seems to be decrying the game for not being any different than the original release, I'm going to speak from the perspective of someone who has never played these games before. And I think they're great, this one especially. The graphics aren't that great, kind of on par with early Frictional stuff (think Penumbra) and the gameplay is great if you're an adventure fan. The puzzles can be awesome, or sometimes baffling, the voice work is not great, but fits the vibe, and the atmosphere is fantastic. Also, after having played so many bad first person horror games lately, this one was a breath of fresh air. If you liked Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and are down for something a bit more lonesome, and focused on puzzles instead of action, you'll dig. If you're a graphics-snob who gets bored or frustrated easily, stay away.

I'll recommend this game because you will need it to see what happened to Howard Loreid and Loathe Nolder from Darkness Within 1. The story and atmosphere are still satisfying but...

This sequel is different from the first game in that it now requires WASD to walk around. So if you appreciated the laziness of point-and-click in Darkness Within 1, you will not find it here. In fact the game itself does not include any kind of mouse-only layout.

Now here comes the universally frustrating part: The Steam version of this game is different. They switched the clues and puzzle solutions around, and no one has put together a walkthrough to cover it. You will only find solutions in the Steam forums. The saddest part is that some of the solutions are illogical and you will probably NEED a walkthrough. So enjoy that little hitch. I'll try to post some clues here and in the forums.

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD**

Below the Old House:

The "container for liquids" and the means of opening the closet are now in the underground gallery beneath the Old House.

The contents of the metal box in the underground gallery: You will need them to get through the padlocked door in the underground gallery beneath the Old House. There is no key in this version.

Let a few bugs sting you on purpose and listen closely as you walk near the stairs leading down into the pit in the center of the underground gallery.

Below the Old Mansion:

Statue w/ Sacrificial Dagger beneath the Old Mansion: Take a second look after you hear the weird sound.

The ring found beneath the Old Mansion: Its too dark down there to look at it properly. Go up into the Mansion's basement and look again.

Inside the Old Mansion:

There is something to pick up in room through the door by the fridge. It is necessary for you to see all the endings.

There is something in the tub.

The Retirement Home:

Grab the thing at the foot of the stairs as you leave for the sewers. You will need it.

The Necropolis:

The snake-head recoils each time that you get the 3 symbols correct on a disk on its head.

Having played the pretty decent first Darkness Within, I came in expecting good things from the second one. I was unfortunately disappointed. I don't mind that the graphics aren't impressive, since it's an old game and it does get the story across just fine, but the story is the biggest problem. It's full of Lovecraftian horror cliches, loose plot threads, bad story pacing and hardly makes use of the previous game's story or events at all.

I get the feeling that the game really wanted to be a classic Lovecraft-style horror tale set in the 1930s, but kept forgetting it's established in 2011. The first time we see an indication of a modern day environment is when we see a box of discarded VHS tapes in the bookstore, but it ends up being the only one. Howard has misplaced his cellphone sometime between the two games, and the newest-model phone we see is a broken 60s variant. There's not one television in sight, let alone a computer. Even the few (nonfunctional) light switches we see are early 20th century. The only car we see (and actually get to use) is a 30s style fordor that belonged to Howard's grandfather - gone is the small but modern car from the first game. Every NPC talks like they stepped out of a turn-of-the-century novel, fear of "strangers" is rampant, everyone talks about curses and "rites" even though in the next breath they insist they don't actually believe any of that, oh no, but let me tell you in detail and purple prose about all these curses anyway. And who writes diary entries that come with cliffhangers for events that will take place weeks or months later!?

Almost all of the referred-to NPCs from the previous game are killed off somewhere behind the stage before the game even begins. We never find out what became of Howard's police friend, Arthur. We spend a good quarter of the game making a mysterious machine work at the bottom of an abandoned building, but besides one scrawled note, we get no results or consequences from it. We don't know who the robbers' employer was, nor do we know what was in the sewer. I understand that part of horror is fear of the unknown, but that's no excuse for sloppy storytelling!

This game does have superior sound design, and the full 3d environment is more comfortable to play in than the Myst-like static backgrounds, compared to the previous game. But as a whole, DW: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder is much better than this one.

Unfortunately, DW2 takes a step down in quality compared to its predecessor -- this, I suspect, is largely due to the switch away from Scratches-esque point-and-click style to a fully 3d engine. Everything just looks and feels a little wonky (and occasionally buggy). Worst of all, the world is too soft around the edges and lacking in detail compared to DW1... I just didn't feel as immersed in the environments despite the increased freedom to explore. This lack of visual subtlety seemingly leads to a similar lack of subtlely in the story and characters (e.g. in DW1, Howard is understandably shocked by every strange thing that occurs; in DW2, Howard is carrying a living homunculus in his pocket for most of the game and barely bats an eyelid). And while the inclusion of more characters in the world was ambitious, the more prominently featured conversation system is clumsy at best and occasionally broken.

DW2 does do one thing more effectively than the first outing: the flow of the game and its puzzles seemed much smoother and more intuitive... I never felt stuck simply because I had no idea what Howard was supposed to be trying to do (as sometimes happened to me in DW1).

If you played and enjoyed Darkness Within 1, I can recommend Darkness Within 2 simply by virtue of the resolution it (sort of) provides to the storyline and the healthy dose of Lovecraftiness. If you haven't played or didn't enjoy DW1, however, you should consider avoiding DW2.

Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage is a disappointment. Not just in the sense that it’s not as good as Darkness Within 1: In Pursuit Of Loath Nolder, but also in that it actively squanders the potential of the first game, and is mechanically inferior.

The biggest change is that DW2 is a 3D exploration game rather than a point and click game. The player has full control over protagonist Howard Loreid. He can freely walk, run, jump, crouch, and manipulate certain movable objects. That all sounds fine and dandy, but it’s apparent quite early into the game how little these changes add to the experience. Howard can explore locations freely, but the locations themselves often feel as small as, or smaller than the areas of the 1st game, only you can interact with them now. You mostly deal in closed spaces and isolated rooms. The village you arrive at early in the game is little more than a small town square with few enterable locations, all quite short and insignificant. There are some larger areas you gain access to later on, but you are either unable to fully explore them, or it is monotonous and pointless to do so. This isn’t helped by the fact that the Howard’s “running” speed feels like walking, his walking speed feels like crawling, and if you have run toggled on, it toggles off anytime you enter a separately loaded area. I am no point and click purist, I’ve probably played less than 10 games of the genre, but DW2’s decision to go 3D feels fully unnecessary and detrimental. I don’t know if it was an attempt to reach wider audience, or perhaps achieve greater immersion. If it was the latter, then it was an absolute failure because…

Jumping is a buggy mess. I thought I was just incredibly unlucky when I fell through the floor 30 minutes into the game, but then it just kept happening again, again, and again. Step 1: start walking into any wall/door/obstacle. Step 2: Jump. Step 3: Continue holding down the walk button. Repeat a few times if necessary. Congrats, you are now able to clip through about 95% of the game. This clipping almost exclusively ends in you falling out of the map, into oblivion. There are a few instances where it can give you access to rooms prior to when you’re meant to access them, but this never provides any advantage. Even if we set aside how utterly broken jumping is, I don’t think you’re actually required to jump at all in the game? There are a few points where it might be more convenient to do so rather than moving some furniture out of the way, but all in all, jumping is wholly bugged and superfluous. Crouching is slightly less buggy and slightly more useful, but not by much. You can clip through some walls by walking into them while crouching, but it’s not as ubiquitous as with jumping. Some clues/objects can only be found/examined while crouching, which I guess is moderately realistic, but crouching to find a clue never made me go “Yep, this makes abandoning the point and click genre worth it”. Object manipulation is similarly useless. Howard must occasionally move something out of the way in a room, but most of the time the objects serve no purpose and only get in the way. It’s also pretty ridiculous how having to drag a chair out of the way is slow and tedious, but said chair can be sent flying across the room if you jump into it at a certain angle.

The more puzzly parts of DW2 are mostly intact. There’s plenty of material to read, but there’s generally less clue underlining and thought combining than the first game. Puzzles are still frequent, but they never intrigued me as much as they did in DW1.

You might think that the game having larger focus on exploration would bring you into contact with more people, but that is not the case. There are 5 NPCs you can talk to throughout the game, all hideous, rubbery, quasi-human, and donning yaoi hands. The conversations are nothing but exposition, and when you have multiple dialogue options, you’re expected to exhaust them in the order they’re presented, or else there’s a good chance they won’t make sense. There are a handful of background/bystander NPCs in the town, but they only serve to make you feel more alone. They don’t even have any canned dialogue responses. You can shine a flashlight at and jump on a sleeping train station hobo without consequences. Most of DW1’s conversations took place over the phone, and human interactions were rare. Though where the world of DW1 felt isolated, the world DW2 feels empty.

Aiming for more immersion may have been attempted with good intentions, but those intentions are all for nothing when you’re falling through the map every 5 minutes, exploring sparse locations, and talking to lifeless NPCs.

Criticism of DW2’s story is more vague, because DW2’s story is more vague. DW1’s story wasn’t exactly crystal clear, but DW2 is even guiltier of obfuscating the truth (that’s assuming there is one). I am no stranger to how Lovecraftian stuff works—it would be silly to expect every detail and mystery to be completely explained. Yet the story of DW2 feels so… unfulfilling? Part of the problem is how disconnected it feels from DW1. None of the locations from DW1 are revisited, most references to it are just in passing, and for spending DW1 “In Pursuit Of Loath Nolder”, Loath Nolder has a noticeably small role in the 2nd game. Whereas DW1 was a game of deduction and getting to the bottom of things, in DW2 it feels like you’re just doing various tasks because you’re told to. There’s the supposed threat of people coming after you and such, but overall the story feels without a purpose. As the title “The Dark Lineage” indicates, this game is primarily about Howard’s connection to these conspiracies and plots. Yet Howard comes off as having less of a personality than the first game. Between the two games, he seems to have completely gotten over his potential insanity (aside from an occasional outburst), which in turn makes things a lot less interesting. Likewise, the nightmare sequences induced by Howard’s madness are almost entirely absent too. For no good reason, and only serving to make things less interesting. Howard has zero personality in NPC conversations; he just asks what he needs to know. He comes out of his shell a little more in the 2nd half of the game when he’s brought into direct confrontation with his past, but ultimately it’s not enough to salvage his character.

The dissatisfaction with the story that doesn’t come from the game’s relationship to DW1, comes from the game’s conclusion. Everything that comes after Howard enters the well basically feels like a non sequitur to the rest of the game. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be Lovecraftian and weird, but it comes off as dull, rushed, and nebulous, even taking into account the multiple endings. It is unfulfilling to the story of DW1, and what had been set up in DW2 up to that point. Then there’s some frustratingly unresolved plot points, like the involvement of the law enforcement from DW1 in the conspiracies, or how halfway through the game Howard apparently summons a centuries-deceased German alchemist who tucks him into bed, and leaves a note telling him where to go next, before disappearing for the rest of the game??? There’s Lovecraftian storytelling, and then there’s bad storytelling.

Even if you really enjoyed DW1, I would recommend staying away from this game. Your questions aren’t going to be answered, and you’ll leave disappointed and frustrated. The only thing I can say that’s of truly equal quality between the two games are their excellent soundtracks. The game’s waxy NPCs and loose understanding of walls may come off as unintentionally Lovecraftian, but overall this game is a thing that should not be.

An excellent sequel to one of the best Lovecraftian adventure games ever. I highly recommend this game and its predecessor.

But, to be completely fair, it's not quite as good as the story it finishes. This slight drop in quality is simply a result of it showing the player too much. Arguably, the secret to nailing a proper Lovecraftian vibe is to keep all the important things endlessly in the shadows. This game breaks that rule, and takes you right to the center of everything.
Still, that's a very minor sin here, especially since the story had to go SOMEWHERE.

(Eccentric side note: the game looks amazing on a 3D monitor once you turn off a few of the new graphics settings.)

All in all, I highly recommend this game unless you haven't played the first one yet. But if that's the case, I just recommend the first one even harder.

A worthy successor to the first game, though not as persistently creepy. The change to a 3D engine was unnecessary IMHO - the point and click of the first game worked just fine. A 70/100 effort.

The good

Great use of Lovecraft's stories and mythos
Some challenging puzzles
Excellent sound effects
Occasionally dark and unsettling
Good use of lighting

The bad

Inventory the same as the first game, and just as unintuitive
Models and animations are low-res and stiff
A few frustrating dead-ends

I don't comprehend why so many developers of successful 2D / 2.5D point n' click adventure games feel compelled to make a 3D sequel at some point. In fact, if you can't ensure your game is smoothly playable, why switch to 3D at all? Darkness Within 1 was an amazing 2D adventure, with a 360-degree camera and there was nothing wrong with that. Darkness Within 2 is a fully 3D game in which I've fallen through the map about twenty times so far. It's clumsy, janky, very barebone which makes it barely playable. A couple of pro tips: don't jump in this game, and if you really really have to, F5 creates a quick-save, so hit that beforehand. The first time I was lucky since I jumped while on the second floor inside a building, so I simply went straight through the ground and landed on the first floor. The next time I jumped while outside to overcome an obstacle and then flew downwards into a bottomless void. That's how messed up the movement mechanics and collision detection are.

All that aside, if you're here for the story and the atmosphere you'll love it. There's nothing better than suspense built through the atmosphere alone - the world design, the ambient sounds, etc., and this game does a wonderful job at it. Besides, it's a must-buy if you played Darkness Within 1, as it continues the story and ties quite a few ends. Of course, it leaves a few loose, but ah, what the hell. In the end it's a good spooky adventure which deserves to be cherished by us adventure geeks, because they barely make them like that anymore.

Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage Is a lovecraftian atmospheric horror 3D adventure game and a direct sequel to Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder.

The story continues with Howard, a police detective and now an escapee from a mental asylum, who tries to uncover how the events of the previous game are connected to his past.

Like in the 1st game, you search for clues by talking to NPCs or reading books, diaries and newspaper clips and underlying the text you think is important .
It's still got the same problem that you may have concluded what to do by yourself to solve a puzzle but Howard won't do it unless you combine a few clues.

The unnerving and frightening atmosphere is still well executed by using environmental sound and Howard reactions and the dark environment itself that forces you to use a limited light source to find what you need.

The transition to 3D and the free-roaming here is bad, extremely bad - It was done poorly, its a buggy mass and this suppose to be the director's cut!

Prepare to clip through objects a lot and fall to the void thus losing a lot of progress if you didn't save for the last 20 minutes.

The game is not optimized well - I had to disable some of the advanced video options to make the game run above 60fps.

Also, a small tip - in the video menu, disable noise effect, it just makes your screen looks blurry and muddy.

Another problem is that the UI you have to navigate through and the text you have to read during your playthrough are very small and hard to read - It was not big in the 1st game but here it even smaller.

I don't like the director cut version, it was padded with some borderline moon logic puzzles, the devs did not fix the bugs and ruined the pace of the game by rearranging the location of key items you need to progress.

This game does give a proper ending to the journey and the story itself is still very good but it was frustrating to play because of the bugs, annoying out of place puzzles that were added in the director's cut (especially the one with the poem and the snake's head) and the ugly 3D graphics, especially the NPCs.

Don't count on a walkthrough for the director's cut if you get stuck unless you know German (Unless someone will decide to translate it).

Play this only if you want to desperately want to know how the story ends.

This second instalment is good too, but tbh I liked the first one a little more.

Pros:
- nice puzzles in the first half of the game
- great, creepy atmosphere (especially later on)
- really enjoyed the writing in some of the journals and letters you stumble upon in the game

Cons:
- 3d models of human npcs look a little goofy
- I feel the story is a little disjointed (not sure what the point of the first half even was from a in-game perspective)

Also, this one has more direct references to the Mythos than the first game.