Mega Man X2 tries to one-up the success of its first installment, but it does not do a good job at it.
Like the first game, you must venture into the hostile territory of eight mavericks that showed up months after the defeat of Sigma and the death of Zero.....or so we think. Zero's parts have been taken by a new threat calling themselves the X-Hunters, so now X must not only defeat the 8 mavericks terrorizing the planet but also find the X-Hunters' whereabouts and regain Zero's parts. Each maverick is like a roll of the dice: venture through their terrain and hopefully make your way to them and defeat them in combat. Successfully defeating a maverick gives X a modified variation of their weapon that can be used against another maverick who has a weakness towards it (e.g: a fire maverick is weak against a water maverick's weapon, crystals freeze a fast moving maverick in their place, etc.).
From there, once all 8 mavericks are dealt with, the X-Hunters await in their fortress where your skills will be tested like no other. But before you do, it's best to explore each area one piece at a time. Even after beating a maverick, their terrain is yours to explore as each one holds a heart upgrade that increases X's health, Dr. Light capsules that upgrade X's buster, helmet, legs and body to make him even more powerful and sub-tanks for additional health when things get too hectic.
It plays similar to the first with some minor tweaks such as dashing being added to the beginning of X's arsenal (the leg upgrade allows you to dash in mid-air) and the Buster upgrade has vastly improved over the crappy upgrade from the first game. But other than that, not much has changed for this 'sequel' unlike Mega Man X3 that felt like a true sequel in my opinion. The colorful 16-bit graphics of the SNES are displayed very well in X2, too bad the music pales in comparison to X1. The mavericks in question aren't as memorable as the likes of Storm Eagle, Launch Octopus and the rest. Plus, minus at least one unavoidable death, X2 feels a lot easier than the first one.
Mega Man X2, in all honesty, tries hard to be better than Mega Man X1 but it falls short of that target. Sub-par music, non-memorable bosses, an easier path to beating the game (despite it not being a walk in the park) and a predictable ending kinda hurts this sequel to the classic Mega Man X1. It's still fun to play, though you won't really want to go back to playing X2 again after you play the other games.