I played the first game years ago and outside of the amazing soundtrack, the terrible ending, and good the voice acting, I have a hard time recalling the game. It wasn't bad but I don't recall it being great either, it was somewhere in the middle and playing the sequel which is more of the same my thoughts remain the same except now I can recall aspects of what made consider this game middle of the road compared to the last game.
I'll start with the good, the soundtrack is fantastic and even if a number of tracks in the game are reused from the first one, that game has a great and memorable soundtrack so I don't mind too much even if it adds to the whole "copy and paste" feel this sequel has in general. The new tracks are great and the opening FMV song is so catchy that I watched it every time I booted up the game, and I don't do that with a lot of opening FMV sequences in games, the brevity of it is also a big reason as to why. The synth score just gives the game an impeccable atmosphere of going through the city and it's a good thing it does since you will be backtracking and going through these zones very often.
The voice acting is also well down and as well directed as the first game, the writing doesn't always land but the voice actors do a good job at selling me on the material and makes me want to listen to the cutscenes and dialogue interactions the characters has, some of the humor can be tryhard but it wasn't enough to bother me and considering how monotonous and one note the game can get, the well acted and directed cutscenes can feel like a decent change of pace.
The ending is also a much big improvement over the first game and felt much more satisfying compared to the first game where you beat up an entire town worth of people just for a "fake out" ending that made the game felt like a waste of time. Here when you beat up the final boss, it actually feels like a more satisfying ending instead of the, "ha ha, the main characters' boyfriends were never kidnapped at all" and the main characters landing a blow so hard that the final boss crashed through a helicoptor with a 4th wall breaking end credits song was one of the more amusing parts of the game.
The bosses are also pretty decent stuff, they can be pretty challenging if you don't have healing items and outside of Tsuiko, the bosses do a good job at breaking up the repetition group fights, fetch quests and the padding this game has. They do an okay job at balancing between when to hit them and when to go on dodging on blockable patterns mode.
Now the stuff I didn't like which esstentially involves the combat and the game's structure. The moment to moment combat is "fine" even if playing 2D beat em ups remind me why I prefer the 3D kind where with them it's easier to be in control of the action since you don't have to align your punches constantly and it's about hoping you aligned yourself to hit enemies before they align yourself to hit you. I can enjoy this kind of game but the lack of a dedicated dodge command reminds how tedious moment to moment combat in a game like this can be. Blocking I also found to be useless, since I found the timing to be too strict.
The actual dodge command in the game is too cumbersome to pull off since tapping up on the stick twice isn't as fast as simpily pressing a button dedicated to evading.
Enemy variety can also be one note since you have seen most of them by the time you reach the halfway point and the final few areas just reskin them.
Now, the biggest issue that prevents me from finding this game to be consistently enjoyable is the padding. This is basically, Padding: the Game. You need to go somewhere? Do a fetch quest and do 3 of something to progress. The game will keep doing this for it's entire run time and it gets irritating fast. You want to get to the boss? Do a fetch quest, and run through multiple zones of the map to get something for a questgiver and then you can progress, it's what you will do for 95% of the game. Some of the fetch quests and padding are borderline contrived.
To one example, late in the game, you have to follow Sabuko's instructions of going to the docks to ask Hibari to make masks for you to sneak into Primo's restaurant, but when you meet her, she sends in her goons on you for no geniune reason, and since Hibari and Miasko and Kyoko were on the same side and were working with Sabuko, it made no sense for Hibari to send in goons. This is all balantly done so the player can go on yet another fetch quest to pad out the length of the level even more.
Another example is when you have to go to the school to fight Ken again and there is a "fire wall" where you have to go to the boiler room to raise down. You could've just got to the 2nd fight with Ken after all of those enemies you had just beaten to get to that point but the game needs to drag itself furthur by adding an obsticle that the player never thought would pop up due to how much time was spent getting to the school rooftop.
This is what I mean by how padded the game can feel. You don't get from point a to b, you get to point a go on a detour and then get to point b.
Overall, I didn't completely dislike the game but almost everything I liked about the game didn't have much to do with actively playing it. If I didn't buy this game physically at a convention vendor and getting casual enjoyment from the first one, I would've dropped it after the first few hours. If the make a 3rd game, they better change up the forumla.
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