The emphasis of Strider 2 is all on the movement. They intentionally truncate and limit your offensive options to melee only, with 1 power-up temporarily granting you some ranged damage, but offer you dozens of ways of avoiding damage and closing distance through double-jumping, sliding, trajectory changes, and wall grappling. The movement is fluid and satisfying. The game is on the easier side you just credit-feed you're way through it like a precocious 8 year old arcade-goer with a pocket full of daddy's money, but like most arcade games, the difficulty of Strider 2 is to be judged by it's 1CC, which is no simple feat.

The presentation is great. I love the 2D pixel art against low-poly 3D backgrounds, an art style that time forgot but that lives on in my heart whenever I play Strider 2 or Dolphin Blue. The music is serviceable, and there are no real salient flaws of the presentation here. The environments are excellent, and even in spite of it's simplistic gameplay, the environments work to incorporate both aesthetic and gameplay variety, with wind resistance and zero-gravity situations both awkwardly thrust upon you.

But there are some flaws: I still feel that weapon variety is too low, that most of the game is still too easy, that the music is nothing special, and that it's overall a little too simplistic. My modernized combat sensibilities cry out for block and parry options. But most everything that is actually in the game is done with excellence.