This is to the original as The Lost Levels is to Super Mario Bros.

Barely anything new, no new ideas or gameplay mechanics. It's the same game, but harder. Of course, these are brand new levels, and the bosses are a new concept to the franchise (I seem to remember). However, beyond that, I was a little dissapointed in this.

The first one was a surprise banger when I tried it one or two years ago. Finally got around to play this one only to find the very same elements, all environments look the same, but thing took me almost 4 times to beat than the first one, just because they decided to ramp up the difficulty to eleven?

Yeah, I beat this game in 25 hours or so, the first one was around 7 for me. Both have roughly the same amount of levels.

I didn't even bother with finding the secret characters as they are the kind of secrets that aren't meant to be found, but looked up online.

However, this is still a good game. Mechanics are solid enough. There are no malfunctions to speak of. I liked the bosses, even if some of them are very hard, some others are real highlights.

This would have worked more as a DLC. I guess it's in the name.