Played as Darius II (Two-Screen Version) in Cozmic Collection Arcade (PC). Route was A-B-D-H-M-R-X.

Fun but somehow feels even more brutal than its predecessor at times with how quarter-munchy it is. As much as I like that the death penalty is less harsh for an already difficult game, it still seems unnecessarily heavy for how well-statted both bosses and midgame to lategame enemies are.

It looks and sounds quite a lot better, but a few of the gripes I had with how the first game felt to play do remain here. The movement is a bit too slow and the weapon upgrades sometimes threw me off by messing with my muscle memory, though they didn't feel quite as inconsistent as in the first game.

This game, while a solid upgrade, still doesn't quiiiite feel like the series has come into its own yet. In particular it feels as if the bosses and minibosses are somewhat inconsistent in difficulty once again while the levels are getting pretty close to feeling properly balanced, so I'm hoping the next entry will finally get to a point where they either nail both or come close to doing so.