A strong successor to UN, but the kind of game that takes 2 steps forward, 1 step back.
Sound: For starters, Believe it! No more believe it's! YAY. Still have the Yo's, but much more limited so overall the annoyance factor of the menu system is GREATLY reduced, but that was a minor issue to start with. We're still stuck with the English voice cast, but they are starting to grow on me I guess so I don't hold this heavily against them. As well, they cleaned up the dialog and most of it makes sense this time around rather than sounding like a bad Korean translation. Still, though, there is still some weak voice acting in there. On this points, nothing really took a hit, and overall the sound is an improvement.
Graphics: About the same overall. Now that we have more cast, some elements come out looking better as they have full 3D models, not the weak ones they had before, but generally the graphics have had little improvement. But again nothing bad.
Gameplay: Okay, here we have some good and some bad. The good, AI has been given some brains and can be a real pest. The story mode is much better than before and more interesting overall. The number of items available mid match has been increased, and power ups are available for basically everyone. They have also included several mini-games which can be used to build up cash which are a nice diversion if not overly deep. The bad, although the roster has increased, most were cheaped out on and borrow heavily from other characters. Some like **** don't even have secret techniques, instead just power ups. However, probably the biggest issue is difficulty balance. Difficulty seems to be all over the place in the game, some matches and missions being Insanely frustrating, while others are push overs. This can be really annoying and has more than once forced me to shut off the system before I drive my fist through the screen. Worst still, that improved AI has also learned to cheat. A common one is the AI doing level 3 power-ups instantly (although this may simply be something it was doing in UN1 as well, it was just too stupid to use it commonly). Another one (which may be a bug since I haven't noticed it commonly) is the AI teleporting when it doesn't have the teleport item. Overall, though, the game play is still improved a bit, just not enough.
Value: With an RPG mode to build up your characters, collectables, a much enlarged roster, and a more interesting battle system over all the value is pretty good. I will likely be playing this for a long while to come.
Tilt: Despite the difficulty issues, I still like the game. I just wish they would have balanced the difficulty better. I don't mind hard, but I want to know up front it's hard, not set the game to easy, take on the lowest rank of mission and find it 100X more difficulty that missions several levels higher. Still, for those like me, just take a break and come back.