Not as good as the first, but still addictive and immersive.
Almost immediately after your encounter with the girl, you bump into the Aoto Three, a costumed group representing the local gang that's causing a lot of problems. The base of whichever story you find yourself in or make for yourself is that the Aoto Gang's iron grip on the town is being challenged by an uprising of the Magistrates. You can either quickly find yourself in the middle of a war between both sides of the law or just trying to make an honest living with people who either don't trust you or don't want to. If you decide to live "the high life" and collect funds by the end of a blade, shops and restaurants will kick you out and magistrates will hound you for past illegal transgressions. However, if you decide to undertake the little girl's plight, the town will slowly but surely revere you which will get the attention of the fuzz or the gangsters who all wonder the same thing: if you're so good with a sword, why aren't you working for us? Say you just need some money but don't want people bothering you, you can take jobs from whoever and help out the people as long as you eat and sleep. Or, hell, maybe you just get bored with the town and split, ending your tale. That's certainly a good way of saving swords or items you pick up along the way. Hoard it all and leave town, save, go back in and do it again.
Just like the first, your game can be completed in a few hours or in a matter of minutes. Not only are there several endings, but you might only see 7% of the cutscenes on any given playthrough, even if you did the whole 10 days with a specific group of people. You might not even meet certain characters, just like in the first gane. The major difference here is the voice acting: while it's not by any means good, it exists. To some, this might be an improvement from the first, but I honestly don't mind going back to the first even with just the music (from the dude who did Tenchu's beautiful tracks) and sound effects. Really, I wouldn't mind playing the first instead of this one anyway. Not that the story is any better because there's like 5 stories in both of 'em, but there seemed to be more areas to traverse or people to kill. Out of personal opinion, I liked the music better as well and while the controls are tighter in this new title, it seemed easier to do the 100 kills mission in the first. Fun is subjective and my opinion will likely differ from yours, but I honestly preferred the first one. That said, this is still easy to pick up and play and just as easy to get lost in. Design your character to your liking and try to get all the endings and you'll only end up playing for 100 more hours than you intended.