Watch_Dogs 2 is a pretty clear step up over the first game in every possible way. It feels better to play, the world is more interesting, much of the excessive fluff got trimmed out, and (most importantly) the characters are actually likable now! Marcus, Sitara, Wrench, Josh, and Horatio are all great characters that were a ton of fun every time they got to have some dialogue together.

The main story did have some issues in that it felt like disjointed series of short stories with little to no impact on one another. In addition to that, the antagonist feels like he only matters in a conceptual way rather than any him be any actual threat. This all made the story a little tough to feel motivated to complete and resulted in the ending feeling a bit flat.

My final issue is that the politics of this game are in a weird place. The game paints itself as very rebellious and anti-establishment and while it mostly is that, it doesn't seem to want to go all the way with it. For example, there's a mission where you find out that some cops are using data they get from ctOS to do illegal stuff with a gang. It'd be a great time for the game to go on about police abolition or about the ways in which police don't actually serve the people but instead it goes into a bland "we need to get rid of the Bad Cops so that the Good Cops can be in power instead" and it makes it fall flat. The whole game ends up feeling like it wants to be perceived as progressive and very far left when it really isn't.

But overall, it is an enjoyable thirty-ish hours. Not my favorite of Ubisoft's open world games but a very solid one.