Reviewed on: Switch 2
Code provided by the publisher.
Tormented Souls 2 wears its influences openly, and that turns out to be exactly the right call. This is a game built on the bones of early Silent Hill and Resident Evil, with the fixed-camera dread, deliberate pacing, and nasty resource management that defined those games before the genre drifted toward action. But it isn’t a nostalgia exercise. The modern touches are thoughtful, smoothing out the parts of those old games that aged badly while keeping the tension that made them work. The result is a horror game that feels familiar in the best way without feeling like a relic.
The real surprise was the Switch 2 performance. We have been spoiled with a ton of incredible Switch 2 ports and TS2 is no exception. Games like this don’t always travel well to handheld hardware, and I went in braced for compromises. Instead it looks genuinely good and runs smoothly, holding up better than I’ve seen on lower-end machines like the Steam Deck. Lighting does an enormous amount of work in a game built this heavily on atmosphere, and it survives the transition intact. Dark corridors still read as dark corridors rather than muddy approximations, which matters more here than in almost any other genre.
Verdict
I’m not usually that big of a horror game woman but this one, I truly enjoyed! While definitely not without some rough edges like some stiff animations, it’s a solid romp.
Playing a game this unsettling in handheld mode turns out to be a particular kind of experience, with the screen right in front of you and headphones on, no room in your peripheral vision for anything but what the game wants you to see. With Halloween right around the corner, the timing could not be better. If you’ve been missing the kind of horror that makes you count your ammo and dread opening doors, this is a very easy recommendation, and the Switch 2 version is a great way to play it.
