"Things at the manor start going wrong quickly, however, with Caroline waking up to the distant screams of her sister."

While the studio put forth a valiant first effort with Tormented Souls a few years ago, it’s now back with generally higher production values with the sequel, and along the way, there have also been plenty of improvements made to what already served as a great foundation. Right from the start, Tormented Souls 2 brings with it improvements to visuals, audio, level design, and even the story, which picks things up shortly after the events of its predecessor.

Once more taking on the role of Caroline Walker after the events of the Wildberger Hospital, you, along with your sister Anna, are invited to stay in a manor in the remote Chilean town of Villa Hess. However, the horrors experienced by both sisters haven’t completely left them behind; Anna is still haunted by visions of incredible and gruesome violence, while Caroline is simply trying to make sure that her sister can live peacefully and put the Wildberger Hospital behind them. Things at the manor start going wrong quickly, however, with Caroline waking up to the distant screams of her sister. On walking out of her room, she spots her sister being dragged down the hallway.

"Generally speaking, there isn’t really much more to the plot of Tormented Souls 2 aside from “evil cultists are bad and you must escape.”"

The plot for the rest of the game is essentially laid out right in front of you when you find Anna; the manor is inhabited by crazy cultists, as well as a malevolent being that lives in the shadows and can quite quickly kill things caught in the darkness. After getting knocked out as part of some strange cult ritual, Caroline wakes up covered with knives that had been stabbed into her. She pulls them out, sets out to find Anna, and ultimately, wants to leave behind the manor and Villa Hess as a whole.

Generally speaking, there isn’t really much more to the plot of Tormented Souls 2 aside from “evil cultists are bad and you must escape”. The story does, however, improve on its predecessor in one major way: its characters are overall much better written and voice acted. Caroline and Anna are both able to express an impressive range of emotions, and the voice acting is suitably horrified and frantic rather than sounding (more often than not) bored. Along with this, there are also more characters you get to meet and interact with, ranging from sinister cultists that might not have your best interests at heart, to some of the citizens of Villa Hess, and even potential allies.

On the gameplay side of things, Tormented Souls 2 wears its influences right on its sleeves. Taking several pages from classic horror games like the first three Silent Hill titles, Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, and Resident Evil 3, Tormented Souls 2 makes effective use of the classic trope of fixed camera angles to maximise the horror and atmosphere. Among other things, the fact that you don’t have full control of the camera goes a long way in making you actually afraid to turn around corners, even if you might have the tools to deal with whatever enemies are lurking there. Some of the Silent Hill influences also come into sharp display thanks to the fixed camera following you down long hallways, as well as the presence of the “other world” that you sometimes have to travel through.

"Despite the obtuse camera angles and the deliberately rough combat systems, Tormented Souls 2 still manages to feel quite good to play."

Similarly, even the minimal HUD pays homage to the horror classics, like your character’s health being displayed only through the inventory screen, and even then only through a heartbeat line that starts degrading as you take damage. Even Caroline herself starts showing evidence of damage she’s taken, coming down to a slow limp if her health is too low.

This, alongside the combat feeling appropriately clunky leads to Tormented Souls 2 feeling like a classic horror game. Even when you have a gun, you’re not going to get to manually aim the thing at enemies’ weak points. Rather, you’re encouraged to either avoid as many enemies as you can to preserve your constantly-dwindling resources like healing items and ammo, or make use of traps to take out particularly troublesome foes.

Despite the obtuse camera angles and the deliberately rough combat systems, Tormented Souls 2 still manages to feel quite good to play. Caroline is a responsive character, and you even get the option to go with tank-styled movement like those old horror games if you use a controller. Items that might be needed to solve puzzles or serve other utilities can be hotkeyed to the right analogue stick as well, making it easy to quickly switch between using your lighter as a light source to travel through a dark hallway and your chainsaw in case you need to take down an enemy.

"The level design and presence of puzzles essentially go hand-in-hand."

Inventory management is also a big part of the gameplay here, and you’ll often find yourself juggling between key items to progress through the game, from keys and puzzle pieces, to documents with important story elements, and even your arsenal of makeshift weapons and any materials you might find to craft and upgrade them.

Speaking of which, the level design and presence of puzzles essentially go hand-in-hand, and fans of not just classic horror titles, but even the more recent Resident Evil games will find themselves right at home in this regard. The manor you start out in is quite large, and the map you find shortly after starting the game ends up playing a major role in helping you navigate. Along the way, you’ll also run into plenty of paths that have been blocked off and need you to solve puzzles, which in turn can range from simply finding the right key, to figuring out the precise order of bells to strike to accomplish your objective.

Generally speaking, however, the level design is actually quite a bit more linear than the largesse manor would indicate. Sure, there are plenty of hallways to go down, but most of them are simply either just dead ends, or have a door that is locked from the other side, which means that you’ll find a puzzle elsewhere to unlock this door as a shortcut. Getting out of the manor doesn’t help matters either, since Villa Hess and the other areas of the game are also similarly linear. This isn’t a bad thing, however, as the design of the game’s maps go a long way in making sure you’re constantly making forward progress in some way. It also helps that the maps are certainly quite helpful.

"Sound is another area where Tormented Souls 2 punches well above its weight class."

We reviewed Tormented Souls 2 on PC, where the game was able to run just fine. With maxed out graphics settings and a resolution of 2560×1440, we were able to get a rock-solid frame rate of 60 FPS. The PC, for context, runs on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of DDR-6000 RAM. Maxing out the visual settings was certainly a treat, since the game features some downright gorgeous locales and vividly detailed hallways in the manor as well as the rest of its areas.

Sound is another area where Tormented Souls 2 punches well above its weight class. Along with the great voice acting mentioned earlier, the title also has a great, atmospheric soundtrack that enhances the horrors of the creeping shadows and sinister cultists that you have to deal with throughout your time with the game.

All in all, Tormented Souls 2 is a great example of just what a sequel should be. It takes the strong foundations of the original and builds on them quite well with more polished level design and gameplay, as well as a more focused, albeit simple story that gives you plenty of excuses to run around a sinister manor and its surrounding village. Fans of horror as a whole as well as classic games in the genre alike will find plenty to enjoy here, even if it might not be the most original game out there.

This game was reviewed on PC.

The story in Tormented Souls 2 revolves around protagonist Caroline Walker travelling to the town of Puerto Miller to try and get help for her sister Anna. However, as the trailer describes, bringing the Walker sisters to Puerto Miller turned out to have been a trap, and now Anna has been captured by a twisted cult headed up by Mother Lucia. It is now up to Caroline to brave the horrors presented by the town to get her sister back.

Tormented Souls 2 is slated to take place after the events of the first game, with Caroline still reeling from what she endured at Wildberger Hospital. It is during this time that Anna is discovered to be suffering from an unknown affliction that causes her to cough blood, makes her eyes go black, and causes random bouts of unconsciousness.

On the gameplay side of things, Tormented Souls 2 is heavily inspired by classic survival horror games like the seminal Resident Evil and Silent Hill series. As she explores the town of Puerto Miller, Caroline will have to get her hands on some weapons to make sure that she doesn’t become prey to the horrors roaming the town. To accomplish this, Caroline can get her hands on makeshift weapons like nailguns to fight her way through the town.

Tormented Souls 2 will once more see the return of Caroline being able to traverse to alternate realities, especially once she gets to Villa Hess. Using her abilities from the first game, Caroline can step into the ‘Other side’ and witness ‘replays’ – memories that were stored in video tapes. The actions that Caroline takes in these replays and in the Other side will also end up having an effect in the real world.

Among the adversaries that Caroline will face in Tormented Souls 2 include the Iron Maiden – described as a hulking behemoth and cruel disciplinarian that makes use of a giant crucifix and is equipped with a heavy plated mask. There is also the Harvester – a fusion of metal and flesh, armed with a buzzsaw and a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth.

Tormented Souls 2 will also feature an in-depth story that, according to Dual Effect, includes several layers of twists and revelations that players will have to peel off to fully understand what’s going on.

The title was originally announced all the way back in 2023, and right from its first trailer, the studio had confirmed that Tormented Souls 2 would be using a similar old-school style of fixed camera perspectives to amplify the horror. The original Tormented Souls, on the other hand, was released back in 2022 on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

At the recent Future Games Show, publisher PQube and developer Dual Effect announced Tormented Souls 2. Caroline Walker, the protagonist of the first game, will be returning, and on her journey to rescue her cursed sister, will be exploring the “halls of haunting monasteries and other nightmarish locations”, according to PQube. Check out the announcement trailer below for a glimpse of what the sequel will have in store.

Unlike its predecessor, Tormented Souls 2 won’t be a cross-gen title, and won’t be coming to the Switch. It’s due out sometime in 2024 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The game’s received plenty of praise and attention since its launch, and soon, it’ll be coming to more platforms so that more people can dive in and see what the fuss is about. PQube has announced that Tormented Souls will be launching for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch sometime in early 2022. Though an exact launch date hasn’t been officially provided, the game’s listing online for retailers such as GameStop and Funstock do mention February 25 as a release date.

Meanwhile, PQube has also confirmed that a new free update will be coming for Tormented Souls on October 28, which will add a new weapon (a heavily modified nail gun that deals more damage) and a new outfit for Caroline.

Tormented Souls is currently available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

Tormented Souls evokes the original Resident Evil (and its remake) in a lot of ways, from its fixed camera angles to its haunted mansion setting (or part-haunted mansion, at least) to the moody atmosphere and quite dread it so successfully builds. Making your way through the dimly lit, creepy halls and rooms of a hospital that once used to be an abandoned mansion is done exactly the way you’d want- deliberate exploration and carefully searching environments is encouraged, and the pace is kept slow.

"Tormented Souls evokes the original Resident Evil (and its remake) in a lot of ways, from its fixed camera angles to its haunted mansion setting (or part-haunted mansion, at least) to the moody atmosphere and quite dread it so successfully builds."

Plenty of emphasis is placed on resource conservation and management right off the bat, which means running and gunning isn’t always advisable, and often isn’t even an option, and deciding when to use your healing items and when to hold on to them also adds an element of strategy. This is all typical survival horror stuff, of course, but it’s executed well enough here, and definitely deserves to be praise. Tormented Souls’ horror isn’t about sudden spikes of fear as much as it is about maintaining a constant foreboding atmosphere, which is the perfect way to utilize its setting.

Solid lighting and well-crafted decrepit environments with blood splattered across the wall and unsettling objects or paintings scattered here and there contribute a whole lot to that atmosphere. Tormented Souls’ setting definitely has a sense of place, and its fixed cameras definitely leverage that strength. Camera angles are carefully placed and serve a range of purposes- in a small room, the camera angle ensures that you can’t see too much of the space in front of you, so you never know what’s around that corner. Walking through a hallway, however, the camera might dynamically move around to give you a better look of your surroundings.

Tormented Souls also uses darkness as an actual gameplay mechanic- which isn’t a novelty in the horror genre, sure, but is used quite well here. Many of the halls and corridors and environments you’ll find yourself in will be quite dimly lit, or even completely dark, but staying in darkness for too long physically hurts you. Your tool against the darkness is a lighter, but if you have that equipped, you can’t equip your weapon- which makes treks through patches of darkness particularly tense, especially if there are enemies lurking around. The fact that you can only save the game with tapes – like Resident Evil’s ribbons – further heightens the tension. Tapes are not abundantly found, and you need to be careful about when to use them.

"Quite a few of the puzzles are really well designed, and honestly, I’m all for a deliberately paced survival horror game that’s all about the puzzles and exploration- but Tormented Souls doesn’t quite strike the right balance at times."

Another area Tormented Souls borrows a lot from classic RE and Silent Hill titles is its focus on puzzles. Careful exploration is crucial (as is backtracking, naturally), because finding items and item pieces scattered everywhere and then figuring how and where to combine or use them is how you solve most puzzles, in classic survival horror fashion. Quite a few of the puzzles are really well designed, and honestly, I’m all for a deliberately paced survival horror game that’s all about the puzzles and exploration- but Tormented Souls doesn’t quite strike the right balance at times.

For starters, the map is not the most useful, which is a cardinal sin in a game such as this one. The game also just throws a bit too many steps of different puzzles at you at the same time, and it can get a little hard to keep track of what items you have, or where a particular item needs to be used. Narrowing down things a little bit and not having too many puzzles active at the same time would probably have made for a better, more focused experience, because more than anything else, this leads to aimless exploration and trying to grapple with some obscure cues that you can’t quite make sense of without some trial and error.

Movement in Tormented Souls is also a little rough around the edges. While the fixed cameras themselves do a great job of heightening the tension, both movement and aiming can feel a little clunky and, at times, sluggish, especially in instances when the camera angle switches and your direction is suddenly changed. Trying to zigzag around enemies to just run past them if you’re trying to save ammo also always take more work than it has to, and combing through environments as you’re searching for items and resources feels a little sluggish as well. I realize that this stiff movement is a very deliberate choice on the developers’ part, since that’s what they’re trying to evoke in this decidedly old-school horror game, but they didn’t have to retain this part of that experience as well.

"While the fixed cameras themselves do a great job of heightening the tension, both movement and aiming can feel a little clunky."

Storytelling isn’t one of Tormented Souls’ strengths either. The story on the whole is quite forgettable, thanks to several well-worn tropes, predictable twists, and uninteresting characters. The Resident Evil fan in me did enjoy picking up bits and pieces of logs and files to get a deeper understand of the backstory and the history of the creepy hospital/mansion, but the actual content of the narrative is uninspired at best. The writing is consistently sloppy, and the completely stilted and wooden voice acting doesn’t do it any favours either. Also as much as I do think the visuals do their job of crafting creepy, atmospheric environments, they just don’t hold up very well when the game takes control for cutscenes or more directed storytelling.

It feels a little unfair to ding on the game for some of these things, because though this is clearly a small-budget production, it’s been made with a lot of love- a lot of love for the classic days of survival horror games. Tormented Souls is completely dedicated to realizing its vision of delivering a hardboiled old-school experience, and honestly, that is why it excels when it comes to its focus on exploration and resource management and its palpable atmosphere. But there are plenty of rough edges too, all of which do add up in the end. For fans of the fixed camera era of the survival horror genre, Tormented Souls is a solid trip down memory lane, but even so, it’s got a lot of room for improvement.

 This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.