What a doooooowngrade. I can’t remember the last time I played a game where the sequel was a step down from its predecessor. For every step forward it made, it took three steps back.

Improving upon the original: the story is more important, there are characters (who don’t do much) that flesh out the cast, and difficulty has received a huge adjustment.

Helix Gun and homing missiles are no more, as guns and sub-weapons have been nerfed. Unfortunately, it seems “easiness” was replaced with an arsenal of gun types that are overall weak, many types of mines that I never used, and a new slew of sub-weapons.

Although aside from utility, each one essentially replaces the other. Why use the triple missiles when I can shoot a string of homing missiles? Why use a string of homing missiles when I can dash into bad guys and steal their energy?

Speaking of energy, the GAIA system: I kinda mildly dislike it. Sure, it’s fun to drop from a high perch and watch green particles flow into the tank, but there were a good number of times where my SP gauge went out before I could cross a gap so I just had to sit and wait. It gets worse with each SP gauge extension.

Backtracking and padding are the game’s two biggest sins. Despite utilizing several small world maps, there is NO fast travel system, meaning over an hour of your playthrough will be spent backtracking. Why fast travel wasn’t implemented is beyond me.

This game is padded about as well as a children’s pillow. So many planetoids act as filler levels to get a map to another planetoids. I don’t understand why they just cut out the filler nonsense.

Has that same "road trip" vibe as the first one although it feels more fun, despite the protagonists' urgent and depressing reasons for going on said road trip.
I found it much shorter and much less difficult than the previous entry, which is not a bad thing in this case. The tedium of Zero-One, for the most part, has been stripped away. Travelling between areas is much quicker, and the new energy-recovery functions of SOPHIA greatly facilitate simultaneous combat and movement. It also adds a bit more of a puzzle element to combat in enclosed spaces where you now have to actively manage your energy usage and recovery. There's less to collect to fully power up SOPHIA, but what arsenal you do gain feel more like fully-fledged upgrades as opposed to "weapons you use in a very specific situation to clear an obstacle." Due to the shorter game length I feel like I didn't get to play around with all of the upgrades as much though, particularly the on-foot ones.
Speaking of, I'm still not the biggest fan of the on-foot sections, but the addition of the counter system adds some intricacy and a much needed flexibility on behalf of the player. Even just the minor tweaks to the visuals really improve the sense of speed as well.
I could actually see myself revisiting this game for a quick run-through some time in the future, unlike Zero-One which had so much slog that I think two playthroughs is currently enough for my lifetime. I'm kind of disappointed that there's no hard/destroyer mode that really forces you make use of your entire arsenal in this one, I actually would've liked that challenge this time.
Zero-One had this pervasive feeling of "you against the world" loneliness to it, with Jason and Eve being the only characters who have dialogue during the entire story. I absolutely love the way the world has been expanded in Zero-Two, especially with the references to other Sunsoft titles. I always appreciate the "you are not alone in your fight" message in video games no matter how much it gets done.
I also really like the sequence before the true ending. While I won't elaborate for spoilers, it's a great final challenge and tests the sum of what you've learned from both games in the series.
I think I have my expectations set a bit too high for Zero-Three, but I'm excited to play it anyways.

I really don't know why I bought this when it, of course, feels like more of the same, if not worse, as the previous title and I didn't like that one. The buggy still feels floaty and imprecise and the level design is even worse now. Where it was flat and uninspired or just irritating in the original, it is now apparently these boringly large rooms with an area the size of a small game within one enormous room. Or that was the first area, where I realized that I wouldn't be enjoying this game any more than I did the first one and gave up. The too-easy on-foot sections of the first game have been nerfed but now you have this anime-inspired timed move instead and it's still too easy and very boring. These games are just aggressively boring and I'm out.

All the design subtlety of a LEGO Duplo set. "Ooooh lookout for the icky square - don't touch it you'll take damage!" Some telegraphing is fine but sheesh -- when you can play the entire screen in your head at first glance, what's the point in going through the motions?

The first Zero retained some of the mystery and opaqueness of the original Blaster Master to its benefit. That's entirely gone here.

Pointless dialogue, weird side-characters, unmemorable music, and unintuitive tools.

I played this all the way through when it came out, and after replaying the first Zero game for the third time, I thought I'd try this one again for the second. Welp, I forgot most of it, because it's mostly forgettable and it can get incredibly frustrating quite often.

I love the idea of trying to replicate the thrill of an old NES game, but in reality, it's really hard to do right. The first Zero worked because it was just polish on what was already a competent game. Some things were streamlined as there were more buttons to use and greater processing power, but the maps, avatars, and creatures generally stayed the same. They moved at the same pace, they had the same behavior, and because it worked 35 years ago, it continues to work now.

But with Zero 2, they attempted to create new levels, new creatures, and new rules, but unfortunately didn't change the avatars enough to make the clashes work. Jason still moves like a turd, but some of the new creatures now move faster, or there will be an unfair number on the screen and they all can shoot, and they shoot often. So instead of having the space and ability to plan out how to react (because Jason can't run, you need that space), you have to mash the dodge button and hope you get enough parries off to clear enough of the screen away to get some breathing room.

The car just drives and jumps with that satisfying heft, but now you have to fight other cars, and they can shoot faster than you and hit harder than you. These battles turn into ones of attrition, as you repeat the same moves in a cycle, firing off shots conservatively, which isn't inherently bad, but this should last 3-5 cycles, not 20-30.

There's a neat story in here, where Jason and Eve meet other cars with drivers and robots, but it is reduced down to a handful. This one is a Japanese farmer swordsman, this one is a plant lady (with plant boobs), this one is a WWII soldier guy, and of course, none of them will listen to Jason until after a dumb fight.

It's exhausting and frustrating, and it really dampens the fun in the car exploration. I put this down in the second half of the split planet in favor of something else. I'm not sure if I'll ever pick it up again or if I'll pick up the third one or not.

It's not a wash, it's not terrible, it's mostly fun, but the parts that aren't fun are REALLY not fun. It's a bummer.