A bit disappointing, but there are improvements..
In this sequel, you go back and forth between the real world and the dream world, where a mysterious spirit guides you to a terrible castle where an imprisoned princess is held captive. Predictable, yes. In the real world, you're on your way to find Jabulba's Brother (that's his actual name), to investigate Tak's mysterious dreams. Eventually, both worlds colide, and you find yourself traveling through many other dimensions in order to stop bad guys from using the staff of dreams to summon a terrible beast.
First of all, the overworld village is gone. This time you just go from level to level, which can be a little agitating after the first version, where you could often be free to explore and return to levels you missed to gather various items you may have passed before. This time, you have absolutely no ability to go back, and when the game is over, it's over. There's no playing anymore, you pretty much have to start over. It also abandons some of the comedy this time. The last game was hilarious at times, but this one lacked that sort of charm. There were always a few chuckles, but not like it's predecessor. Also, this "sequel" provides no noticeably improved graphics that I can tell. The graphics in the first were great for it's time, and provided a great environment to play in. However, in this sequel, you would expect and anticipate something a bit better, and even though a few details may be a little smoother and Tak may have a new look, not much has changed.
Now for the improvements..
In this game, the gameplay has improved greatly. In the last game, all you could do was just beat your enemies to death. This time, there are various combat techniques you can perform and also power attacks. You also can choose one of four or five animals and gain a special ability that takes a great deal of mana, but can take out tons of enemies at once, and is just simply fun to use. Also, the juju spells are much more organized, although it still requires memory, which is annoying. The Juju abilities add SO much to the gameplay, and make trampling your enemies actually fun!
This game is actually a lot more lengthy than the last, which is saying a lot because the original was pretty long. The storyline changes a lot, and you find yourself traveling to all sorts of places. These environments may not look much better than it's predecessor, but the levels are amazing this time, even though they might as well have made this tittle a side scroller since theres pretty much always only one way to go that you must follow. The levels you go to can be suprisingly exciting and just genuinely fun. The puzzles are still there, with some new twists that make things harder and a lot of times a lot more fun. Plus, the sound is still great. Theres a different melody for every level, and, as always, the voice acting is great. I don't care what anyone says.
Furthermore, the replay value is gone. Theres no more going back, that's it. When you've beat it, you're done. No more game for you. This takes away the best feature to the original, which was being able to go back and play previous levels, which was always great-Just exploring around unseen areas. And last, but not least, the dream world is very annoying and tedious. The levels there are mostly introductions to evil dream monsters, and you basically just hop platforms and kill these beasts just to keep yourself alive. There seems to be no point to this, and it just takes away from the great jungle environments in the rest of the game.
It's a decent game, but for a sequel, it should be much better than this..