If you have not played both games I strongly, strongly, STRONGLY recommend playing and finishing the first before you head onto this one.
The Evil Within 2 has a mix of a slightly open world and chapter based levels like the first. If you thought the first was just "okay" or just "good" then you'll most likely think this game is better.
If you loved the first because of it's chapter based levels, characters, and narrative, you'll most likely think the first is better. The game starts off a little bit after the first game's events, and the DLCs of course. Sebastian's journey is a lot more personal this time than the first. As you already know, Sebastian is trying to find his daughter within STEM which is a machine that links a certain amount of minds to one "host" mind. Throughout the game you basically know that everything is a false reality, which to me kind of ruins the mystery of "Where am I? And why the hell is everything ****ed up and creepy?" like the first game was. However if you read the files in the game you can grab, you'll find out other reasons why the place you are in is so "eccentric" to say the least, so it's not totally ruined. There's also more people to help you out, so you're not mostly in the dark like the first game. Just keep in mind that this story mainly focuses on Sebastian rather than trying to find a way out of a hellish dimension. Story out of the way, this game introduces new elements like I stated earlier, a slightly open world game where you can find side missions to do. It also introduces more currencies. In order to upgrade your weapons you need weapon parts which you find throughout the game, you can't upgrade your weapons with green gel anymore. Green gel is only used to upgrade Sebastian, there's also Red Gel which you need to access the next tier of whatever you're trying to upgrade. You can also craft ammo, not just crossbow bolts but actual gun ammo. You can find ingredients to do so throughout the game. The ingredients aren't abundant unless you're playing on Casual, so if you're worried about this making the game too easy, don't worry it doesn't. Atleast not to me. If you do think it makes the game easier then bump the difficulty up to Nightmare. As far as the horror elements go, to be honest this game was not that scary. Only a couple parts really creeped me out but other than that the horror elements were not that great, which was kind of disappointing to me.
If you were a huge fan of the first, keep in mind that this game is completely different. Story wise and gameplay wise. And it continues Sebastian's personal story that you saw a glimpse of from reading some files in the first game. If you don't care about that then you'll most likely not like this game, atleast the narrative part. If you want a more personal story than what the first game offered than this is what you're looking for. In my honest opinion, I think this game is awesome for what it did, trying new things out and continuing Sebastian's story. However that being said I do think the first game is far better. But that doesn't mean this game is bad, it's the opposite. It's great, but completely different than the first.
Optimization is amazing by the way. Didn't have any stutters or crashes in my playthrough. So you don't have to worry about that. My GPU is a GTX 970 stock and my CPU is an i7 4790.
I finished my first playthrough in 13 hours on Survival. But you can extend that by either exploring more or by playing it on Nightmare. 7/10.