The second playthrough loses effectiveness when faced with the same surprise attacks, puzzles, and enemy encounters.

 

These characters aren’t given a lot of screen time, yet still manage to paint themselves as distinct figures whose vastly different lives have brought them to the same place. The protagonists, brought to life by actors David Harbour and Jodie Comer, enjoy strong performances, despite their personalities being slightly blander and their encounters with past traumas occasionally seeming a bit forced.
Yet, while the exploration and puzzle-solving shine, allowing AitD’s psychological horror to slowly work its magic, the poorly executed combat and stealth sequences fight to undo these efforts.
Unwieldy controls and animations reduce melee scraps to mashing the F button and watching Edward and Emily wildly flail a melee weapon around while hoping that the swings connect to elusive enemy hitboxes.
The major problem with melee combat is that – when enemies don’t ambush and gang up on you resulting in a swift, unavoidable death – it puts you in harm’s way more often than not resulting in taking unnecessary damage.
While you can technically dodge enemy blows, getting a sense of when they’re about to connect rivals dabbling into the arcane arts. The protagonists can only carry one melee weapon at a time that does eventually break, but its durability isn’t shown. In addition, there were instances in which a bug stopped me from picking up additional weapons, claiming that I was “full” although I couldn’t use any of them.

Thankfully, you don’t need to resort to melee weapons much, since ammo pickups and health-restoring drinks are generously awarded. On standard difficulty, I could actively avoid using melee weapons for the most part.
Unfortunately, while the pistol, shotgun, and Tommy Gun sound fierce, firing them feels a bit too loose while landing shots don’t have quite as strong a punch as expected.
You can also pick up throwable items but, unless you already have a target in your sight, you’ll find their usefulness severely limited. While aiming throwables – which you can neither store in your inventory nor put down – you move at a snail’s pace, so you either have to unnecessarily backtrack while being chased or hope that enemies clump up and wait for you to throw your Molotov cocktail at them, which doesn’t happen all that often.
The terrifying thing about the few bosses AitD throws your way is how much of a nuisance fighting them in cramped spaces gets, where even aiming your gun can become fiddly. Instead of making the horrific design of some of these enemies memorable, encountering them mainly reminds you of how slapdash the combat system feels.
Stealth is even clunkier and forgettable. At certain points, you can crouch to move through small areas without alerting the same enemies you’ve already shot multiple times. Since the reasons for getting spotted aren’t communicated enough, it’s simply not worth engaging in any sneaky activities, especially since pulling out your gun and going loud gets the job done much quicker.