I plan on coming back to this in the future, specifically when DLC drops, but as new games are coming out, my initial time with this has come to a close. However I am happy to report that I had a really good time with this, and ended up putting in way more hours than I expected. This was partially due to playing in Co-op, but even still, the game is pretty damn good.
The short review would be like this - If you liked the first game, you'll probably like this one too, as most of the positives and negatives of the first are stuff that can also be said about this game too.
The positives are: Good gunplay, solid visuals, decent mix of bosses with more good than bad (and several excellent ones), really fun (if occasionally super cryptic) side content/secrets, and just a fuck ton of good content in general.
The negatives are: The performance being pure dooky for the host in co-op (and only "decent" for non-hosts), the weirdly harsh difficulty spike on the final mission/boss (not really an issue with that mission itself and more of an issue with the rest of the game being a bit too easy), a decent helping of random bugs or issues (shoutout to the trophies being broken), the story being as forgetable as the first game, and the procedural randomization still feeling a bit unnecessary as it can lead to sometimes just missing out on really cool content and instead giving you a boring level/boss.
Overall, really good game that I got a lot of mileage out of. If you liked the first, this is a pretty easy recommendation. Not as much of a leap forward as one would hope, but certainly still worth it IMO.
The short review would be like this - If you liked the first game, you'll probably like this one too, as most of the positives and negatives of the first are stuff that can also be said about this game too.
The positives are: Good gunplay, solid visuals, decent mix of bosses with more good than bad (and several excellent ones), really fun (if occasionally super cryptic) side content/secrets, and just a fuck ton of good content in general.
The negatives are: The performance being pure dooky for the host in co-op (and only "decent" for non-hosts), the weirdly harsh difficulty spike on the final mission/boss (not really an issue with that mission itself and more of an issue with the rest of the game being a bit too easy), a decent helping of random bugs or issues (shoutout to the trophies being broken), the story being as forgetable as the first game, and the procedural randomization still feeling a bit unnecessary as it can lead to sometimes just missing out on really cool content and instead giving you a boring level/boss.
Overall, really good game that I got a lot of mileage out of. If you liked the first, this is a pretty easy recommendation. Not as much of a leap forward as one would hope, but certainly still worth it IMO.