Amnesia: Justine (2010)

The story of Justine is, as you would expect, gutted in comparison to The Dark Descent. Obviously, trying to fit insanity-inducing ancient horrors into a game as short as this would not be easy, but all it does end up being is "mentally ill person is actually crazy killer ohh crazy likes torture" and whatever, even including a complentary 'blood hallway' with edgy ass phrases written in, given the name, blood. I'm generally not a fan of these stories. They are incredibly easy in a very boring way. The Dark Descent was creative enough that neither the protagonist or antagonist enjoyed torture for the sake of it, this is not so much. It's got some floating vague ideas about psychiatric evaluation, but they drop to absolutely nothing when the game doesn't even really have any different results based on your decisions, and ultimately is just 'make the game easier by killing this guy' or 'introduce the only difficulty you'll face by saving this guy'. Feels like a wasted opportunity given the concept. Even worse, they had the audacity to include three different achievements that require you to replay it three different times, each one worse than the last, and none of them end any differently at all. A wasted opportunity!

In gameplay, going from compelting The Dark Descent -> Justine does reintroduce some of that fading fear, since you regain a marginal sense of that fear of the unkown, though it lasts about as long as you expect. The puzzles in Descent were never insanely outstanding, but here they only even exist if you want to save anyone. When you do, you're met with three obtuse annoyances that don't really follow all that well, and you solve them through vague guestimations that don't feel great to achieve. Even Descent had a feeling of gratification, but it's fairly lacking here. Even the fear only exists in one area if you want to solve one of the puzzles, but it's really just a fear of having to do everything all over again if you mess up the timing.

Play it if you like, but if you're desperate for more Amnesia you're probably better off skipping ahead to the dedicated titles, and I most certainly wouldn't recommend playing through this more than once.