Amnesia: Rebirth
It does improve upon The Dark Descent, but at the same time it can't compete with big titles such as Resident Evil. In some aspects it's worse than the first Amnesia. I made up to two endings while the third I watched.
The beginning of the game seems to be a reference to Bioshock, because both games begin with the main character chatting and aboard an airplane and having some piece of paper on their hands. The game also seems to draw a lot of inspiration from the movies Stargate and Event Horizon. The same coffin shaped doorways in the movie Event Horizon are used in this game in the alien structures. I can't say that this is a great game, because the terror in it is softer than in the first Amnesia. In the first Amnesia the player faced narrow places and constant darkness. Now it has much more light and more open spaces, including outdoor vistas. For me the best part was near the end with sentinels with light beams surveilling the area. The rest of the game just felt that it could had a lot more depth and more interactivity to make it more appealing.
Where it did improve upon The Dark Descent
The matches can lit up multiple light sources and they also give you a bit of light for some seconds.
The depiction of fear through on screen black veins or nerves and the scary sound is better than the depiction of insanity in the first game. The defocus and screen shaking effects were more annoying than providing a good depiction of mental disturbance.
People complained about the game being constantly interrupted by the memories with dialogues. They've listened and toned it down.
With more money they invested in better graphics. The environments are larger and with more details.
The puzzles were too much trial and error in the first game. They've made them easier and with clearer hints
You couldn't fight the monsters in the first game, now you can struggle and escape their grasp.
What I disliked
The lantern has a focused beam that lights up less than turning it off and seeing the blue light in the darkness
The puzzles are too easy
They didn't explain the origins of the aliens nor the relationship with the Roman Empire. I guess it has to do with their budget, because Resistance 2 had some very interesting horror scenes.
The level design presents the player with some bifurcations where both ends have lights and this is confusing, because sometimes there is a dead end and other times both paths lead to the same place.
With the exception of the run for your life scenes, all others with monsters are pretty dull. Splinter Cell for example has all levels designed with stealth gameplay in mind. In Amnesia they placed monster encounters in a way that feels out of place or too jump scare, because more often than not I couldn't escape and hide from the monster.
They have some serious issue with climax, anticlimax and pacing. The constant switching back and forth between escaping, daylight, then back again to darkness creates some exhausting game with ups and downs. Even Wolfenstein The New Order was better at the moments where the main character is captured.
Ideas of mine
Projected shadows of monsters passing by on walls, hide yourself inside a coffin, camouflage mechanics, throw objects to create distractions for monsters (it was used in the other Amnesia, for some reason they've abandoned it), rats or cockroaches, skeleton falling of the ceiling, pipes breaking down and leaking, etc. They could have made the character able to climb up boxes, or create tension by means of making the player cling onto ledges or balance himself or herself on high places while there are monsters lurking underneath.
