At least for me personally, this game feels a lot worse than the first game.
It's one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I've had, and not because of the on-hit death mechanic or anything, but because of the level design that feels like the devs deliberately choose to annoy the player.
I already didn't care about the story in the first game, and I care even less about the second one's. So what do they decide to do? Add interactable NPC characters in a building that you have to talk to after every mission for some reason. They immediately made their unique game into a Shadow Warrior 2 clone. I cannot help but feel that I'm playing Shadow Warrior 2 again when I have to skip lots of mediocrely voiced lines of generic dialogue from NPC characters I don't care about.
I also didn't really care for the semi open-world, though jumping from the bike and then grappling to it mid driving was fun. I just think an open world doesn't really work with Ghostrunner. Some of the obstacle courses for the bike missions were frustrating too.
So what's most frustrating about Ghostrunner 2 is the excessive platforming puzzles that get annoying and boring really fast. I understand that they want to pad the gameplay time, but maybe make it fun instead of tryharding to see how annoying you can make the player? I remember the first game also had a lot of questionable platforming puzzles toward the end of the game, but this one is just really not it.
They get annoying so fast that I was waiting for the game to end so I could be finally done with it. That's not what a "fun" game should make you feel. The first game had a decent pacing because you were always inside those buildings running and slashing through enemies. This one breaks the pace with dialogue no one cares about and dumb platforming puzzles.
In the first game, you had a special ability you could use maybe once a level like Blink. And you get that in this one too, but I never once used any of the special abilities in this game whatsoever. The level design and the amount of bs that is constantly thrown at you at any time inside combat is just so overwhelming that you just run around like a confused puppy trying not to get hit with 12 different projectiles that are coming at you from all directions. You have a guy lasering you from across the map, another one shooting a blaster at you, a mech that shoots a wide horizontal laser that you can't dodge, a guy that hulk jumps at you, random zombies running toward you, some priests looking dudes with very long whips that can do vertical and horizontal attack you can't dodge, flying enemies shooting 20 projectiles at you, and many many more in just one area.
Another annoying thing is that you can't use this special ability in boss fights, which kinda makes sense since most of the boss fights are highly scripted so you can't really go off script and deal damage the way you want, but it's still annoying.
Nevertheless though, these aren't really That hard when you get the hang of it and the game kinda flows when you finally hit the sweet spot after dying a 100 times, but the problem is that even if you get the hang of it, the level design and platforms are actively working against you and you have to play exactly the game wants you to in order to win.
Again, like I said, I actually found some of the biking parts really fun, but the parts where I had to do obstacle courses with enemies swarming on me made it way less fun, just like the rest of the game.
The funny thing is, the final boss fight is easier than most of the regular arenas. And you know what they do to mix up the boss fight? Of course, just throwing you into annoying platforming arenas for 4 times after you do damage to the last boss. Like they can't just let me fight the boss and be content with a simple fight, they have to give me multiple stupid platforming puzzles because why not.
Some new mechanics are introduced in this game, most notably wingsuit, but you only get that the mission before the final boss? Like I understand that they'd have to fundamentally change the level design for the wingsuit to be incorporated into the game, but why introduce that so late into the game and only for one mission?
For all the rants I had for the things I didn't like about the game, it's not like I didn't enjoy this game at all though. I still had some fun playing it, especially early in the game. I loved the Avatar boss fight. It had a great soundtrack and was probably the most fun boss fight and level of the game with how they changed it constantly and the movement you had in that. I also still like slicing through enemies, and while I think the running speed is painfully slow, traversal still was smooth and felt fast-paced and fun, apart from the platforming puzzle parts.
Like I said, the game isn't that hard when you realize what you have to do and in which order you have to do things, but the game still tries too hard to constantly throw things at you in the air, on the ground, and at your face just for the sake of it, as if the boss throwing three ground mines that you have to jump constantly to avoid wasn't enough.
While I actually had fun playing the first game and was less frustrated with it, I was more frustrated with the stupid platforming and the level design in this game than actually having fun with it and couldn't wait to finish it as soon as possible, which is a shame. If I had to replay one of these two, you'd probably have to pay me before I chose the second one.
I probably would've given it a 7/10 if it wasn't for the stupid amount of dumb and annoying platforming sections in the game and the unnecessary focus on the story and the characters I don't care about. Oh and another thing, I couldn't even hear what they were saying because the music and the environment sounds were louder and had to look at the subtitles, so why even lean on the story?
