A great sequel indeed, though I never liked it quite as much as the original UT.
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Pros:
+ Vehicles: The introduction of vehicles spices up the gameplay, particularly in Assault mode, where the open up all sorts of ambitious new level designs.
+ Variety: With the upgrade in graphics comes an even greater amount of possibilities in terms of levels, and there's all sorts of unusual places to fight through. Some of the new gameplay modes are interesting, too.
+ Content: As utterly full to the brim as the original UT was, they somehow fitted even more into this one. 5.5 gigs was an obscene size for a game at the time, but you certainly got every last drop of value for it!
+ AI: Once again, the computer is devestatingly capable when you switch its intelligence up - I never really played it online, but I didn't feel like I was missing a thing.
+ Tournament Campaign: The bitty experience of the previous UT has been sorted out with a nicely concieved single-player campaign, where you progress through the tournament and manage your team along the way.
+ Scope: Some of the levels are really quite breath-taking in scope and ambition, particularly in the Assault and Onslaught modes.
+ Adrenaline: A neat addition to the game that gives you some special powers once you've built up enough adrenaline points. Great for breaking ugly stalemates.
Cons:
- Speed & Difficulty: While the original UT found the perfect balance of speed, whereby it was controllable but still an intense experience, this one was so fast I found it to be incredibly difficult to line anyone up in my sights for so much as a second. Combine this with the character models being much slimmer than before (not to mention jumping around like lunatics half the time), and I found it unfairly taxing on my reflexes; though this can be tempered to some degree by turning the difficulty down.
- Weapons: In the original UT, you always felt like you had a fighting chance of killing your opponents, no matter what equipment you currently had. In UT2004, however, I found most of the weapons to be slightly less useful than in the original, mainly because it can be so hard to hit anyone unless you use something which deals splash damage. There are also some slightly odd issues with the weapons roster, such as why the Ripper has vanished without a trace (when it could surely have been tweaked to become more useful), and why the Sniper-Rifle and the Lightning Gun both co-exist when they are both so similar, but my biggest problem is that the weapons just don't feel as satisfying to shoot as they did in UT: with less recoil and noise, combined with their smaller size, they seem to lack the all-important punch they once had.
- Tournament Issues: The team can be a massive pain to sort out in the single-player tournament - they drain almost all of your winnings through fees, injuries and challenges, and sometimes have far too much trouble beating teams they supposedly out-class in almost every way. It would have been fine if the fees were balanced better, but it's infuriating as it is! Also, it's a shame it isn't structured more like a proper tournament, with teams you can actually track and deal with more closely, as well as genuine tournament progression, rather than the thinly-veiled linear progression it actually uses.
- Less Brutal: While it's still a constant barrage of deathitude, it just doesn't have the same visceral punch that UT had. The gore is slightly more subdued, and combined with the weaker-feeling weaponry, some of the destructive glee has been drained from the series.
- Jumping/Translocator Abuse: In a reflection of the way most people play Unreal online, the bots tend to constantly jump and repetitively beam ahead with their Translocators as a means of avoiding enemy fire. While it's fair enough as a strategy, and undoubtedly good practice for anyone who wants to play online, I just feel that it looks stupid and invalidates the simple act of running: there ought to have been some kind of limit on how many jumps/translocations you can perform within a short period.
- Two-Team Limit: Why can't you have three or four teams in a match, like you could in the original? Even if people don't often play with so many teams online, surely it can't be that difficult to add it in for offline players who like a bit more variety?
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Overall, this is still an extremely complete package, and there's enough to keep you playing for a long, long time. However, whether you prefer it to the original or not is largely down to your reflexes: if you're twitchy enough to keep up with the action, you ought to love it. For me, while I still thought it was a great game and a worthy sequel, I just found it lacked the hearty punch of UT, and occasionally became frustrated with how difficult it could be. Definitely give it a try though!