In short major improvement from the first game however brings a few new small annoyances in with the improvements.
The Game is hugely Ichigo centric, now I get that the guys the protagonist and all, however the joy of the first game was that you could unlock other characters early on and from then on use them despite them not being the protagonist on all levels straight off, however in Soul Carnival 2 they seem to want to shove the fact Ichigo is the protagonist in your face, this game takes ages to unlock even the first other playable character but even then you have to play the majority of the missions as Ichigo first before you can play them as other characters which gets really tedious after a while as the simple move sets of the characters get boring after the thousandth time and you just wish to be playing as someone new.
ok the moans are out of the way.
Pro's: As with the first game it still carries that charm that made the game fun in the first place and made it stand out from the crowd of regular anime games.
New characters are great, though there isn't as many as I'd like the ones you do get are great, the ability to play as Kyoraku, Halibel, Stark and Gin really do make this game worth the purchase on their own.
Some characters from the first game have improved move sets such as Ishida who's initial move set in Bleach Soul Carnival 1 was poor at best despite it only being 1 move changed for him it is a great move and makes you want to play as him.
More story driven plot which is good, but as I said before would have been nice to have any character playable through all missions once unlocked and just have Ichigo during the cut scenes a bit like how they did it in the first game.
Graphics for a side scroller are nothing short of beatiful, I don't think i've played a side scroller with with graphics this nice.
On top of all that this game is miles longer than the original and is also slightly harder at certain points.