Although not perfect, Sly 2 overcomes its minor flaws with excess personality.
Cons: Using hub-worlds is a hit and a miss; Dialogue can be a bit over-expository at times; Occasional graphical slowdown; Context sensitive actions can be a bit finicky
I hated the flood of animal mascot platformers in the '90s and early '00s. Minus a few games (2-D Sonics, Crash Bandicoot), they almost universally lacked true personality and innovation even if the gameplay was technically good. They were completely forgettable. Luckily the team at Sucker Punch must have agreed with me, as Sly 2: Band of Thieves is fun, creative, and bursting with personality.
[Warning: The following paragraph contains spoilers for Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus]
Sly 2: Band of Thieves picks up shortly after the first game ended. Evil mechanical bird, Clockwerk has been slain and its parts lay in pristine condition guarded by Interpol. That's not going to cut it for Sly and his team though, and they set out to steal the parts and dispose of them for good so that no one should ever use them again. But they're too late, and the parts have already been stolen by the time they reach them. From there the quest becomes episodic as the group attempts to steal all the parts from a series of Klaww Gang members who are using them for a variety of purposes.
The episode style is applied nicely, with some highly stylized cutscenes beginning and ending each level. And although the story itself is fairly simple and occasionally features overly blatant dialogue, the cast of characters constantly shines. The heroes: slick, confident thief Sly Cooper, timid brainiac Bentley, and brute Murray (who constantly refers to himself as "The Murray") are likable enough, but the enemy cast steals the show. Each Klaww Gang member has a distinct name and a well-defined personality: for instance, lounge lizard (literally) Dimitri constantly uses odd lingo when talking. Jean Bison (pronounced "Beeson" to emphasize a certain French aspect of it) is a Canadian bison from the 19th century who was a product of his times. And another character is a spider who's husband died early and left her a widow. Gold. Each character brings an interesting new perspective to the tale. Few '90s games could manage one interesting and/or likeable character and yet Sucker Punch brings an entire game full of them.
The gameplay is likewise interesting and likeable, taking normal acrobatic platforming and adding a light stealth twist to it. Usually this just means staying out of spotlights and flashlights and not holding the run button. As a standalone stealth product this would be a very poor showing, but it works nicely as a complement to the platforming action. Well, those parts describe the Sly Cooper portion of the game anyway.
New to Sly 2: Band of Thieves are missions where you play as Murray or Bentley. The former of the two usually brings a brute force element to the missions, requiring you to take out enemies, carry objects, or destroy something, with less regards to stealth. The latter tends to be the biggest variety player of the group, with RC sections and hacking being the only frequently used mission styles. Even when playing as Sly or Murray though, missions rarely repeat and get boring even if some are a bit weak in the grand scheme of things.
What's cool about the missions though is that they are carefully structured to have a purpose. The end goal of each episode is a heist of some kind, but much like in the movies you can't just waltz in and take anything (although one mission does involve dancing). Instead, most of the missions (which are scattered about a hub-world unique to each episode) have some distinct purpose relevant to the heist later. It's an engaging set-up that usually leads to a great pay-off at the end of each episode.
As for the aforementioned hub-world, I'm a little less sold. This is nice in connecting all the objectives to a common area, sure, and it means that the secret documents (this game's collectible) are able to be well hidden, but traversing the areas can be a bit tedious. Since you have to start each mission with a specific character, you'll often have to run across the map to switch to that character before running back to start the mission. It doesn't break the experience, but it's an unnecessary complication that breaks an otherwise great flow.
One of the great things about Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was it's art style, which featured a very comic-book esque cel-shaded style that highlighted the personality of each character. This is thankfully a holdover for the sequel and everything still looks pretty great, even in this age of HD graphics. The one complaint that can be lobbed at the graphics is that there are occasional framerate drops. Other than when you have an entire map in your screen you should be fine though.
The audio of Sly 2 is also above average. Music is appropriate for the situation, often echoing heist movies, but not necessarily chaining itself to that one theme. Voice acting is very strong and helps sell the story even when dialogue is a little choppy. And other sound effects…well, they work.
Expect somewhere around 13-15 hours to beat this game without collecting everything (which can be kind of fun, since hiding locations aren't so devious as to require guides), but Sly 2 never wears out its welcome. This is largely because every piece of the puzzle works perfectly in cohesion, even if the edges are a bit worn.