As someone who was looking forward to this hoping for it to improve on what I disliked about the original I'm overwhelmend by how much better this sequel turned out to be.

I disliked the original because it was more a 2D dark souls and I'm not really fond of that formula anymore. This game follows the metroidvania beats far closer with it actually having movement upgrades that while basic all make traversing the enviroment more enjoyable and come with lots of challenges. The the new weapons you can get are all great even with the clear superiority of one over the others and interestingly early on dictate the routes and upgrades you can get since these weapons have specific interactions with the enviroment allowing you teach otherwise unreacheable places. Generally the game's got a great rythim with exploration and rewards and only gets less interesting when you run out of new places to see and things to do by the end. Impressively even the visuals are better, shame the cutscenes are no longer obscenely detailed pixeld art

People might take issues with far lower difficulty but that's mainly due to your chatacter being much much stronger. The real issue are enemy types who lunge forward at you, have fun taking damage as you wake up because their on top of you.

If you had a decent impression of the original or just want a great game in the genre be sure to play this.