I admit, I was a little worried that the game wouldn't be as good as I remembered. Fortunately it was as good as I remembered and in some places better. But at the same time it was also a little worse than I remembered..
To start the graphics are as good as I remembered. It's no doubt one of the most beautiful games on the PS4. Everything is wonderfully colored and shaded. The lighting is great. More than ever it feels like a Möbius comic.
The gameplay managed to be better and somehow worse than I remembered. It feels like a definite improvement over 1. It is genuinely a lot of fun to just move around and explore the world. And the other gravity modes add nice variety to the shifting. However I feel like Lunar and Jupiter aren't really used enough in game. The sidequests don't really use them and the main story rarely has you use them asides from dungeons and some boss fights. I wish you could get more mileage from these modes in the hub world and the sidequests because they really are fun ways to shift. I love moving like I'm in zero gravity with Lunar and I love how fucking powerful Jupiter is in combat. While the gameplay feels good, I know that it could definitely be better if the game actually moved in 60 fps.
The story was just about the same as I remembered. In that it has some pretty damn fine highs, and really bizarre lows. I will admit playing 1 definitely made somethings easier to piece together and it felt good to get a pay off for some of the mysteries set up in 1. However my main problem with the story is that it felt like 3 different plots were stabled together haphazardly. Chapter 1 is about classism. And Jira Phaga Lao nicely reflects that with it's vertical design. Chapter 2 is about the inevitably time and how we can only let it flow. That's cool. But how do we go from classism to that? And then Chapter 3 feels like the conclusion for the whole series. If this sounds somewhat nonsensical. It kinda makes sense... But only really if you're that dedicated to GR's lore. Still I did enjoy it. Flaws and all. Kat makes the whole thing enjoyable.
In case it wasn't obvious with how much I've written, I really care about this game. It came at the right place at the right time for me as a teenager. I'm so glad it holds up to me as an adult.

I know totally get why this game has the audience it does. It's cute, it's fun, and bittersweet by the end. I adore the cute story book look of the game. It kinda feels like a children's stop motion show with how the characters animate. The gameplay itself is fun. Good balance between challenging and easy. And the plot was way heavier than I honestly could've ever expected. I commend the team for going in such a direction.
Also I find it hard to believe this was directed by the NES Ninja Gaiden guy.

I went into this with pretty low expectations and I was surprised to see this was actually a pretty decently fun and kinda charming light gun game. It's not doing much to reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay. It's very much what you'd expect. The enemy designs though are far from what you'd expect. Zombies packing heat. Near naked Jason Voorhees's twins. A zombie car. This game is really creative with it's enemies as well as being a visual treat with all the detailed sprites and impressive pixel gore for the time. It even has destructible environments in some levels! Definitely play this with a friend if you want something neat to play to pass some time.