You are talking about EW2?

Yes, after the inital sequence, when you get to the open world village part, EW2 lost a lot of drive for me and it doesn't get much really better from here. Only some sequneces are really good that mde the trip worth for me. But overall it wasn't as satisfiying as EW1. it's a mixed ride that one should play as an action game, rather than a survival horror. You need to fight because you need the GEL!

If you are losing health during fighting you are doing it all wrong. When you figure out enemy view arcs and alert radius, combat is getting a lot easier. The one good thing is the game sticks to it's rules.

I played it only in 1st person view though.

Actually I was referring to EW1.

I'm not enjoying it very much.

1. The story is up to now, complete non-sense.
2. I can't relate with monsters.
3. Lighting is annoying.
4. The small amount of ammunition you can carry... is ridiculous. Is damn annoying.

You aren't alone there.

The first game plays like a Shinji Mikami Greatest Hits album, but for me it was an album that included none of the hits I enjoyed nor wanted to hear again.

I see,

I think EW1 is awesome but ultimately much harder, !even on easy! than EW2 due to clunky movement etc.
EW1 is hell of a ride for me but agreeing with TheMonkofDestiny, too: STEM is just an open ticket for mindfu**ing. It gets more varied and obscure, later!

They went with more Ammo in EW2 and IMHO it does not work for the better of the game. They give you more ammo later on.

YMMV! :)

Ammo is not the only problem I'm essentially having with EW1.

The traps across the levels are just non-sense in the middle of non-sense.

You find yourself in a damn village on late 1800 century all of a sudden.
Ok... is a trademark of these games but...WTF.

Still not understanding much of the trama.

I just completed Chapter 3 of EW1 and I also spent the time & energy to get the Knife Beats Chainsaw Achievement from the boss, which caused me to become extremely familiar with this particular level.

I don't agree with the most of the OP's criticisms. The lighting is perfect for a game of this type, and the shadows are amazing.

Not sure what OP means by "everything is so over the top." It's a horror game with zombies, not a realistic life simulator. But at least it does the zombies in a serious way, as it should, instead of in a corny way...which would have made them not scary if they were corny. But thankfully, they are not.

The OP complains about stealth, yet this is a stealth game by design, which is probably a very good thing. Because it if weren't, then it would probably be too arcade-like, which would destroy its survival horror tone.

I agree that the level layout is confusing, but I think that's good, not bad, because it adds to the feeling of horror, which is the whole point of playing games like this.

As for the OP's point: "fighting is mainly only winnable by losing a lot of health:" to that I say - yes and no.

Yes it is true that you are will get owned most of the time if you have a direct confrontation vs. the enemies...but on the other hand, the game is designed deliberately to discourage you from doing that in the first place. You are not playing Rambo or someone like that. You are supposed to be weak in close quarters combat in this game. I think this is a good design decision for the type of game that they were wanting to make.

If it was a Doom Eternal-style corny FPS, then my position on that would be different. In that case, I'd agree that the characters needs to be strong at combat. But this is not an action game of that kind.

And you can get out of close quarters fights if you have enough ammo and if you aim your shots right.

But generally, close quarters combat is only worth doing if you get trapped unexpectedly. You aren't supposed to fight the enemies in close quarters combat unless it's a last resort when they forced you into that situation.

I agree the traps are annoying, but that's why you are supposed to take the time to sneak around the level slowly and disarm them before they get you. I think that fits with the design of the game as a stealth & survival horror game.

As for the game not being scary: I disagree with that. I find it to be very scary, which is largely because of all the points that the OP complains about, i.e. traps, low ammo, it's hard to fight your way out of close quarters combat situations, etc. Those things make it so that if the enemy catches up to you, then you are in deep crap, and you have to run for your life.

If the OP was playing this stealth game as if it's not a stealth game, then I could see why he didn't like it. But I'd say that's not a problem with the game itself. That would be like complaining about how Doom Eternal is horrible at stealth. Well yes it is, but it's not designed to be a stealth game, so that's not really a good criticism of it.

I do agree that the story is nonsense, but at the same time, I half-way forgive the game for that because the nonsense story somewhat fits the premise of you being trapped in a strange world where nonsense things can happen that wouldn't ever happen in the real world.

1. If you search the store page the word "stealth" is not used once. Still I don't mind stealth games.
2. I'm doing stealth a lot and many times stealth doesn't work as enemies just see due to scripts or level design.
3. The combat is not difficult. Once you get the timing right enemies are piece of cake. Smash, move away, smash, move away... until their head explode.
4. I don't even use ammo as once got used to melee guns are usless.
5. Levels are completely non-sense. You get teleported around from corridor to village to corridor. And? Why?
6. Chapter 6 and still no clue of what is going on, aside character appearing disappearing for no apparent reason.
7. Enemies are not scaring. At all. Even the invincible boss are just meh. Expected. Uninteresting.
8. Over-the top means the game treis to too hard to be horror and scaring becoming comical. It fails all the time with: monster design. Level design. Excessive gore. Tearing flash sounds. Is a damn parody!

I'm sorry you come in with bias on how I should play my game.
So yes: the OP dislike this game. I'll drag to the end to see how stupid will be the closing chapter :D

-- Remove --

Well, the original post was about Chapter 3 specifically, and Chapter 3 specifically is definitely a stealth-based Chapter.

However, after having made my previous post in this thread, I played further into the game, and then I realized that this game jumped the shark quite a lot in the next Chapters after 3, because it stopped being a stealth-based game.

And instead, it starts forcing you into fighting huge swarming mobs who rush you in massive waves, right out in the open, where sneak attacks are not even possible to perform.

Yet this game is very much not equipped to handle that type of gameplay, as the play control is way too bad to accommodate it properly.

So for those reasons, I partially retract what I said in my previous post. I still think my praise of the game is applicable to Chapter 3 in particular, so I stand by what I said as it relates specifically to Chapter 3 only.

But I retract the parts where I made it sound like the whole game is a stealth game, which unfortunately it isn't, even though it would have been a lot better if it was (or else they'd have to massively improve the horrible play control, and also drastically increase the ammo availability, in order to make it viable as a non-stealth game).