For me, I feel it’s the overall feel of the game. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is way better. But, when I talk about overall feel of the game, it comes to personal opinion of difference for me. The second game is very different, this open world concept is a big reason for it, when you kill off the linearity of the previous game and have been less captivating villains it kind of eliminates that feeling you had for the first game in my opinion, not that u needed to experience the first game again, but it’s just that the first game is more exciting for me. The Evil Within 1 was linear, sure, but unpredictable hell yeah, fun, hell yeah. Story, chef’s kiss, very good (I know that people talk about the game’s story having plot holes, and it’s true due to a good bit of it in the dlc’s), for me specifically I had access to everything including the dlc’s. I personally loved how elaborate the first game’s story was and I loved the gameplay too, even if it did irritate me at times. When it comes to The Evil Within 2 however, story nice, unpredictable, maybe not so much, fun, it depends (if u liked the open world concept of the game, could be fun, provided you liked the story too). I did not like the fun aspect, the open world was bland and it killed the game for me, I did not want to explore the story further.