Monumental improvement over the first game mostly because of the existence of copen. Not only an infinitely more interesting character but his playstyle actually feels like an evolution of the stuff in the zero and zx games. He plays a lot like model H in ZX (which was already awesome) but with even more air mobility and a focus on staying airborne by air-dashing into enemies. Kudos also doesn't reset on a single hit anymore, thank GOD, instead taking three hits and can optionally be reverted to the old style or be turned off completely. Even then the stages and (most) bosses feel WAY more accomodated for memorising patterns and layouts. Enemy placement is significantly less annoying and I found myself getting S ranks by just trying to boost my score as high as possible and beating stages quickly, instead of taking god knows how many attempts stages took me in the first game to achieve. Gunvolt plays almost identically but at the same time is simply far more enjoyable because the levels actually feel decently designed. Still don't think the narrative and writing hits as hard as the zero games but the next game being entirely centered around copen and after gunvolt 1's bad ending no less gives me immense confidence.