I am so sad to have to write this. I have never been so insanely angry at a game. This game started out so good, and then got lost in a mess of horrible Special Stages, "skill-based" gameplay (in a game that doesn't really have good controls to begin with), and AWFUL, AWFUL checkpoints.
That's the worst part of this game. The checkpoints, or lack thereof. There is no more infuriating feeling than to collect a crowbar, a key, a coin, then run a special stage, fail, and be sent back to before I got those items. The "damage obstacles" and the platforming challenges really don't belong. And the checkpoint issue is CONSTANT throughout the second half of the game. I got to where Esther needs to "go back to bed" (before meeting Dee in the library). Went through the whole sequence where the hands come up from the floor and all that. Decided to explore before meeting Dee, and... found a Special Stage. Now, I should have known better. But I tried it. Guess where I started after I died? Right in the beginning of that section. Before going to the bedroom. Have to repeat the hands coming up from the floor segment each time.
Oh, there's more, too. IMMEDIATELY after that, when the three dolls are roaming the halls. The VERY NEXT SEGMENT. Collect 9 candles, some salt, sage, and a trinket. I got everything but one candle. Collected the last candle. Died. Can you guess what happened? I kept the candles, but the game TOOK THE OTHER ITEMS AWAY.
And the very next section, where I ragequit. In the old house, with three stories. Get all three keys, check the calendar, chase the ghost around for an indeterminate amount of time, accidentally die... start over without the three keys. Are. You. Serious.
This game started out a faithful successor to the original. Halfway through, the dev must have left it alone for six months, which they spent playing old Mario games, then suddenly realized they wasted all their dev time playing Mario and hurriedly rushed out the second half which, coincidentally, plays like a bad Mario horror game. The two halves of the game could not be more different. The first half was made by the brilliant Dr. Frankenstein. The latter half was made by the very unqualified, very inexperienced Igor.
Please redo the entire second half of the game. Everything after Esther gets locked in the cage needs to go. Get rid of Special Stages, put checkpoints after every item and coin collection, checkpoints after every horror event, checkpoints after every room entry. Then I may try it again. The first half of this game is every bit the genius masterpiece the first one was. The second half is a travesty that should burn in a fire. I hate to be so scathing, as I'm a developer myself. But when your game loses its identity so drastically halfway through, taking away from everything that makes it a "horror experience," sabotaging itself so completely that it's unrecognizable from the original product... that's a tragedy.