I had similar issues with The Evil Within but pushed through to the end. My common complaint about most games is that they are too long but Evil Within really pushed it at something like 16 hours. It’s got that cool Mikami scenario variation but very often it feels like a slog. When I played it back near release on PS3 there were extremely long load times which came after deaths in a game where instant deaths from traps are quite common so yeah. Pretty ambitious final boss though (at least visually).
I played the demo for 2 and felt like they didn’t really know what they wanted to do with the game. The setting is somewhat at odds with its gameplay since you enter into a collective mindscape only to shoot and stab everything (even surreal nightmare monsters).