Better than the first, but unfortunately not as long.
GAMEPLAY - If you've played the first game, you shouldn't find too much different here. Unfortunately there are some things this game did away with. Gone are the alternate costumes and individual character benefits. Instead there are medals that give bonuses to your party as a whole, and only a single alternate costume strictly for appearances only. Also, there are two-character finisher moves that are a nice edition, but sadly not all of them are unique. Each character has also been stripped down to only using 4 special moves. This doesn't really bother me, although I do think some characters got the short end of the stick because of this. For example, Mr. Fantastic was one of my favorites in the first game, but his new moves aren't that inspiring. There were also some cool characters cut from this game in favor of others. Still, these are minor complaints about a game that still has the fun beat 'em up qualities that the first one had. - 8.5/10
STORY - The story is all about the whole Marvel Superheroes Civil War...but then quickly strays from that plot in favor of talking about the deadly nanobots released by Iron Man's faction. The Civil War part of the story is by far the most fun because you'll be fighting rival superheroes. Before and after the fact, however, this game doesn't have a ton of excitement pushing you onward. Luckily the Civil War takes up about half the game. - 8/10
GRAPHICS - Graphics are much better than the previous game. Other than the cases where you're swarmed by enemies, you should almost always be able to tell where your character is located. I sometimes was confused in the first Ultimate Alliance and got my character confused with another. - 8/10
SOUND - The sound hasn't really improved or worsened since the first game...it's pretty much the same. - 7.5/10
LENGTH/REPLAY VALUE - The game isn't as long as the first one, but the story makes it that much better. I would just say that the environments of the first one outdo this game, but the first game doesn't have nearly as good of a story. I would say there is a fair bit of replay value here so that you can play either Captain America or Iron Man's side during the civil war, but not really much else besides leveling the characters. - 7/10
BOTTOM LINE - It's good to see an improvement upon the original formula for this series of games. I do prefer some things about the first game, but if you're playing more for fun rather than doing the RPG thing by building up the best characters possible...you should have more fun with this one. The story is better, and also this game gives you more reasons to go back through it again than I think the first one did. A pretty awesome game, to say the least. - 8/10