Spirit Hunter: NG
I played through the first game, Death Mark, a year and change ago. Finally getting to this game. Note that NG isn't a direct sequel. This takes place ~5 years after Death Mark, just before the turn of the millenium (July - August 1999. There are a few occasional mentions of the millennium change and the Y2K). There are a few references to the characters of Death Mark, but they are kept short and out-of-the-way.
Anyways. I'm through the first 3 chapters (counting the Screaming Author as the third chapter, and the first little bit with Yuri as a prologue).
The overall premise of this game is that the protagonist gets infected by an occult curse. To ward it off, in each chapter of the game, he has to hunt down a spirit while with a partner, investigate the spirit's background, and then encounter it in the chapter finale. Here, you either purify it or destroy it. Purifying usually means to 'empathise' with what caused the spirit's creation and put it to rest, while destroying it basically overloads its grudge until it blows up. Destroying will lead to your partner's death, and eventually to an overall story bad end.
The game is very much like a virtual novel in its construction, but with a large exploration and point-and-click element to it. You explore multiple rooms in each area to find out more about the local spirit. The final battle is always a turn-based style fight where you use items you've found through the chapter and your knowledge of the spirit to ward it off and then vanquish it.
There is a moderate amount of jump scares in the game, though only a few of them are truly in-your-face, while the rest are brief ghost images in the background, or occasional haunting noises...this is, of course, assuming you want the jump scares and noises. There's a setting to toggle the jump scares between a normal amount, a 'Scary Mode' amount, and none at all. I went with Scary Mode and got a few scares, but Scary Mode seems to be just about what Death Mark had with no mode setting at all.
The game's visual style has that weird sort of pastel tone that a lot of horror game visuals go for. This will be a weird tangent, but that visual is one of the very few times where something made in Japan has character art that actually look Japanese to a Western view. There's a moderate amount of 'gothic' visuals, too.
Now, some comparisons to Spirit Hunter: Death Mark...this game doesn't explicitly call them 'Live or Die' sequences, but instead have a 'WARNING' label to start it off. At certain parts, you will be given a multiple-choice sequence, sometimes with multiple choices back-to-back, where you need to select the correct choice(s) or it's game over. The Live or Die sequences feel significantly weaker here than in Death Mark. The first reason is that some of the 'correct' answers just feel completely nonsensical. Death Mark had a few in its 4th chapter that required some science knowledge, but I've wiped out so many times in NG because the correct answer is almost completely a wild guess. Secondly, there's a countdown timer going from 1000 to 0. If you hit 0, it's a game over as well. In Death Mark, sometimes a wrong choice would merely knock the timer down by 500 all at once, so you could afford to get one bad choice on a run. In NG, basically every bad choice ends the sequence immediately.
The bosses also suffer a little bit from this. Death Mark had some more intuitive solutions for fighting the bosses. Some of the fights here were a lot more trial-and-error.
The exploration sequences are also weaker. Death Mark mostly had larger rooms that could be 10-20 rooms for the most part. What I've seen of NG so far is around 5 rooms at a time.
Finally, there are a few points in the game where it's possible to run into roadblocks if you don't have much knowledge of Japanese culture. Death Mark had one such point in the 5th chapter. It occurs a few times here, too. I sorely wish a translating outfit in this day and age would try to make puzzles a little easier when this happens.
As for things that are better? Definitely far-better developed characters, mostly since NG keeps a tighter roster of characters. NG also introduces the (presumed) final boss right away, unlike Death Mark, who spices the narrative up a lot.