Tormented Souls 2

Not your typical day at the spa.

Tormented Souls, to me, has always been a love letter revival to early era survival horror games. It gave me feelings of pure nostalgia with the B-movie-esque voice acting and PS1/PS2 visuals. Don't get me wrong! There are incredible horror games with new concepts and ideas seemingly being made each year, making it a great time to be a horror game fan. However, I sometimes find myself pining for that old school feel. Tormented Souls came along and filled that gap effortlessly with that wonderful feeling that originally made me love the genre like a sibling I grew up with. When I heard about the sequel and witnessed some of the slick preview footage, I was ecstatic to be delving back into a continuation of the Tormented Souls’ story.

The game opens with Caroline Walker and her sister, Anna, arriving at the sprawling Villa Hess compound under the guise of a spa retreat that promises rest and relaxation. The horrific events of the first game are still fresh on their minds. The truth of the matter, Caroline explains to the nun she had correspondence with, is that she needs help for her sister. After the events of TS1, Anna had been exhibiting strange behavior where she blacks out during terrifying drawings, only to come to and have no recollection of the episode. Anna, naturally, is instantly skeptical of what Caroline has brought her to, considering they have traveled to a convent far away from home. Caroline reassures her, and they both end up falling asleep after a long and exhausting journey. However, when Caroline wakes up, she is alone; Anna is gone. Terrified for her missing sister, she steals herself and heads out. In true horror story fashion, things are not what they seem, and everything goes from bad to nightmarishly grotesque faster than Caroline can imagine.

During her exploration, she meets a few others who seem to be mysteriously bound to Villa Hess in one way or another. The strange cast of characters you meet along your journey is equally as interesting and well-written as the Wildberger sisters themselves. Each one has a long history that is woven throughout the game, discoverable by cutscenes when ducking into a safe space, or various diary entries and news articles scattered about each location. Some may even be more a part of the main story than you realize. I find that their ability to craft these people into believable story occupants was very well done, and I found myself itching to find out more about each new addition to the story. Especially an individual bound to a wheelchair that seems to disappear and reappear faster than Caroline can run the length of a hallway.

Tormented Souls 2 is by far a larger experience than the first. Instead of just a couple of locations, including a sprawling mansion and “other world” sides of the same spaces, TS2 offers many different locations to delve into. They jam-packed the game with not only the massive Villa Hess compound, but also a good chunk of a small town. Each place contains almost its own biome of sorts, complete with monstrous encounters you may only see in that isolated space, but also its own history that you can discover through exploring every shadowy corner you can.

You can't speak on the locations of TS2 without talking about the artistry of the game. Everything is beautifully rendered down to the finest and goriest detail, utilising great lighting, robust colors, and ethereal ambient noises. Every dark hall and ravaged room of Villa Hess tells a story to the observant with the placement of broken items, blocked doors, and blood-slick floors. Even when you are outside and catch a glimpse of the open night sky, they don't allow you to shake that dreadful feeling of isolation. The roads out of town are blocked by mountains of debris, and the streets you can move on fare no better. Everything about its environments feels deliberately placed and painstakingly colored.

Tormented Souls 2 also comes equipped with smoothly operating controls that improve some mechanics started in Tormented Souls, as well as designing new and helpful ways to navigate, fight, weapon switch, and even aid in inventory management. My favorite mechanic is the quick select for your favorite weapons, making swapping between light sources and guns effortless. The only issue I ever had with the movement controls was when running between 2 camera views. Caroline would sometimes whip back around to continue on with the direction I was pressing, regardless of a frame change, like rounding a corner in a hallway, and she would turn about face to go back the way you were coming from. This sometimes caused me to confuse directions, and I would end up going the wrong way. This small fault can turn detrimental in a chase sequence, or, for example, a certain boss fight I was in that had multiple elements you needed to be aware of and control, all while avoiding the gross beast that could tear you apart in seconds. 

You not only battle twisted monsters, each more vile than the last, in Tormented Souls 2, but you must also tackle many different and unique puzzles. While they could be challenging, if you kept your eyes peeled throughout your environments and devoured all information you could find, the puzzles would never really become too frustrating. A number of times, I did get stumped and had to take a break to get a fresh perspective, but there were always notes, visual or sound cues that would be a boon if you kept your observations sharp.

Now you may be wondering, how do things behave on the technical side of the experience, given the astronomical amount of things packed into the game? Performance and graphical capabilities were fairly stellar. I didn't find any screen tearing or visual glitches, even in action-heavy boss fights with realm switching and fire in the background. However, I did experience a couple of bugs that had me reset the game to fix the issue. However, my gameplay was sadly halted for several weeks due to a larger and seemingly common game-stopping bug, as referenced by many other players from both PC and console. As I played through Tormented Souls 2 at the same time as its launch audience, my issues were their issues.

I utilized the time away from Tormented Souls 2 to do some work on other projects on my plate, but often I found myself thinking about TS2 and where the story might possibly go. At first, I was a little frustrated, but I soon realized why. This feeling of thoughts being provoked in such a manner was not bad feelings towards a soured experience, but the craving to know more about an expertly crafted horror story experience. The developers worked tirelessly on fixing the bug, as well as adding in some appreciated quality of life updates. I was overjoyed to plunge back into Tormented Souls 2.

Is Tormented Souls 2 the perfect game? Absolutely not. The beginning months of its release were a little rocky, technologically speaking, in terms of game-halting bugs and occasional awkward camera transitions, etc. Does that make it terrible? Not in the slightest. TS2 was a great horror experience that I got willingly sunk and immersed into for sometimes hours at a time. For me, the time away from the game gave me a perspective that made me realize that I was sitting on the edge of my seat with anticipation of the rest of the story. It was a crazy, dark, grotesque cavalcade of nightmares that I invite anyone who loves the horror survival genre to devour.

Developer - Dual Effect. Publisher - PQube. Released - October 23rd, 2025. Available On - Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.