While it's not better than the first, it has some things that make it a different experience... sort of...
Gameplay - 7
Surprisingly, the gameplay is pretty decent in this game. It shows it can be ambitious, but it's not perfected. Unlike the first game, there's racing stages and battles stages, not just racing stages. You have 8 characters to choose from, and they play almost the EXACT same way... which is bittersweet. It means no annoying abnormal gameplay, but it also means you're playing the same game over and over to finish it.
The story plays out a bit differently to the first. Rather than Eggman Nega going around snapping pictures of things and turning them into cards, he's trying to unleash a monster called the Ifrit on Earth. On top of that, everyone thinks it's Eggman, and not Eggman Nega. Well, at least all but Shadow's team. Because Shadow teams up with Metal Sonic, controlled by Eggman, to stop Nega.
The racing stages play only different in one way: the signature move is now a ring-based ability, not an item. However, it'd have been better to either make it a time-based one (where the bar would fill over time) or made the rings regenerate, because at many times during the races it's less of how well you raced and more of how many times you unleashed that signature move to keep your foe behind you. And that's just plain sad.
The battle stages are a refreshing break from the racing stages. While they aren't the most addicting or most fun of a Sonic game I've played, they also show some solid promise if they were to be utilized right. There's a ring battle, a knock-out, and a chao gathering battle, all play similarly and on the same stage. The knock-out stages play like Sonic Adventure 2's VS battles: just hit your foe enough so that you make their ring count 0 and are hit so they are defeated. At times the computer is quite... how do I put it... cheap, but at other times it's a fair fight. Chao gathering battles force you to get a chao from your rival's base and while yours is still in your base bring your chao to your base. Why they made you have to have both chao to get a point it beyond me, it makes these battles frustrating. Finally the ring gathering is easy. Just grab as many rings as possible (spin dash = cheap way to win against your foe :P) and attack your rival to make them lose rings. Simple enough.
The bosses are no different to the first, in all actuality. These can be some of the most frustrating parts of the game sometimes as your rival will literally steal hits from you. And they aren't much fun to begin with for the most part. The bosses require little actual strategy and just more reflex than anything else, and it'll probably cause more finger cramping than you'd like. In summary, the gameplay is promising, but it needs a lot of polish.
Graphics - 7
This game came out in 2007, and it has the exact same graphical qualities as that of the original released in 2006. It truly looks EXACTLY like the first. While some stages look quite good others looks plain. The character models and environments, because this is a 2007 game with 2005-2006 graphics, don't merit much praise. The graphics do enough to not look poor, they do look decent. However they also aren't much better than most graphics of the PSP. You would think the graphics had been improved upon from the first game, but I guess not even a Sonic game looks absolutely gorgeous sometimes.
The passable graphics are supplemented by one thing: the bugs are, for the most part, gone. For those of you who read my Rivals 1 review, you may remember I mentioned there being plenty of bugs mostly in jumping onto a platform or something similar, and then not landing the jump right and falling to your death. The bugs have been cleaned up here, and thankfully it makes the gameplay a bit smoother than the original was.
Sound - 7
Ah, what is usually one of the best aspects to a Sonic game. The sound. This game is... not one of these cases. The sound was actually quite catchy in some stages, but sometimes it's absolutely overpowering or it's too bland and boring. However when the music of the game does things right, you may find yourself humming along. But this game's music is no Chrono Trigger, it is no Final Fantasy. You won't find yourself immersed by the music, rather just mildly attracted by it.
As for the voice acting... Oh, God, don't get me started. There's 2 sides to this: One is that the voices are actually there, and not just a bunch of grunts and phrases piled together annoyingly like in the first. However we're dealing with a cast of voice actors that does not make the characters they portray feel real. The voiceovers are in full: in the story mode every window box with text is accompanied by the character saying what is in that box, much like the Spyro games of the original PlayStation did. However the script is either done impressive enough to merit a look of "wow, this isn't half bad" on your face or is so bad you nearly laugh at the poorly done voice-acting that accompanies it. And trust me, if you end up laughing at the script, you obviously aren't laughing because you're having fun.
Speed - 7
This game has its moments of speed, which are almost always in the racing segments. The battle segments have a SENSE of speed to them, but in all actuality you'll spend most of the time standing there waiting for the right moment to do what you're supposed to do for said battle segment. It's just not a speed-focused part of the game. They could have made it more focused on that. What happened to Sonic VS Shadow from Sonic Adventure 2? Remember that at the end of the separate stories? They could have ripped that onto Rival 2's battle mode and made it more speed-focused, and I'd literally have felt better playing it.
However when the racing segments go right, the thrill of dashing across the screen feels just as great as ever. You almost feel a slight breeze... or that could be the winter cold creeping into my home... Ahem, anyway, the racing is where you'll find the speed, but due to the lack of fine-tuning for the signature moves, you'll spend more time swapping signature moves than actually running across the screen. So anyone playing someone other than Sonic or Tails whose specials are entirely movement focused, you've been warned: your specials interfere with the sense of speed this game is supposed to supply.
Overall - 6.8
As I said, this game has some fun moments. The battles can be pretty fun, the racing is what a Sonic racing game should be like for the most part, and the sound is enough to move things along. However, where every aspect of a Sonic game can go right, this game just keeps things on the borderline. It's at best an average game. It is in no way a BAD game, but when you play it you'll feel like there should have been more, things should have been better, and some things needed to be fixed a little.
This is why we stick to Mario Kart, kids. Sonic just can't do a racing game because something is bound to go wrong. And in this case, the game came up as an average racer, and nothing else.