Survive the Nightmare With These Combat Tips!

When should you stand and fight, sneak through the city, or hide from the horrors? Prepare yourself to survive the nightmare with these combat tips!

Target the head.

This is the first rule of combat in most shooters, and The Evil Within 2  is no different. Every foe in Union suffers extra damage when you tag it in the head. Headshots can take out lower level enemies like the Lost with just two Handgun hits or a single Shotgun blast. Even the bosses, which feature other target areas that are weaker (see our tip below), still suffer enhanced damage when you nail them in the head.

Use shotguns in tight spaces.

Shotguns have great short-range punch, inflicting considerably more damage in close than other weapons. They also have a scatter effect, with pellets spreading outward as they travel away from the gun barrel. This can let you hit more than one enemy per blast, if foes are bunched together.

Snipe dangerous foes from afar.

Once you find and repair the Sniper Rifle, you can engage powerful foes such as the Hysteric, Lament and Harbinger from far outside of their attack range, thus suffering no damage in return. The rifle’s powerful scope has two levels of magnification, letting you zero in for precise targeting. You can drop a Lament or Hysteric with a single sniper headshot; the masked Harbinger requires a few more shots to kill.

Keep an axe in hand.

Hand Axes are powerful melee weapons that score one-hit kills on most enemies. This makes them great for countering the sudden ambushes you face regularly in Union. When a monster unexpectedly bursts through a door or slithers out from under a vehicle, you don’t always have time to aim and shoot before you get grabbed. But with a Hand Axe in your arsenal, a quick punch of the melee attack button decapitates your tormentor before it can inflict damage.

Unfortunately, Hand Axes break after a single use. Although some axes can be found wedged in trees or woodpiles or dead bodies, most are in the hands of hostile Lost citizens. When you spot a Lost with an axe, make it your priority target; the creature drops its axe for pickup when killed. If you get swarmed by a Lost pack, target axe-wielders first so you can scoop up their dropped weapons to slice through other attackers as they converge on you.

Try for multiple kills with one axe swing.

One last Hand Axe tip: if you swing an axe at two or even three foes lined up side by side, your single strike can behead all of them!

Look for the red spots on bosses.

When facing the big bosses—Watcher, Effigy, Matriarch—be aware that their weak spots glow red. Target those red spots to bring down these great monsters.

Try for Sneak Kills whenever possible.

Ammo is precious, especially when playing in the harder difficulty levels. To conserve ammo, employ the Sneak Kill maneuver on any foe that you can manage to sneak up behind. This stealth attack lets you inflict one-hit kills with your Survival Knife on Lost, Albedos, Disciples (though not when they’re flaming), and Gluttons (though not when they’re swollen).

You can execute the Sneak Kill move on Laments, Hysterics and Harbingers too, but one attempt is not enough to kill them—two usually does the trick. Keep in mind that a Sneak Kill attempt on these tougher enemies inflicts heavy damage, so it’s worth the effort even if the strike doesn’t terminate them. Just remember to hustle away quickly to avoid a nasty counterattack.