Far superior to the original.
Blitzkrieg 2 is set in the second world war, as identified by the name. There are three campaigns total, The Germans, The USA, and the Soviets, and the battles cover a wide variety of locations including Africa, Russia, the Pacific, and Europe. You get to see quite a bit of the war, and most of it's rather impressive.
The game is a lot easier to play now. The interface has been overhauled and simplified. Most buttons look more natural, and it's easier to immediately identify what each button does. Also, the addition of the reinforcement screen keeps things moving.
In the original, you had what you started with, and merely had to use them to the best of your ability. Now you can call in troops at will to match your preferences. This makes things alot faster and easier, as if you screw up you can call in more men. You still have to be careful, as it's easy to squander your reinforcements and run out.
All the units are still realistically modeled. Tanks have a myriad of statistics such as armor slope, penetration, etc. This makes the game a very interesting game of rock, paper, scissors. You have to learn the units strengths and weakness, as well as how to use them. You will not win on harder difficulties by spamming tanks.
The campaign been improved. The campaign map has returned but further expanded. There are three campaigns each split into 4 chapters. Each chapter has numerous missions, culminating in one "super" mission. Each super mission requires a certain number of missions to be complete, but not all in order to play it. There is incentive to do all the missions; however, as you will unlock new unit types and gain experience. You can then spend this experience to appoint officers to your various branches. Branches that have commanders will earn XP in combat and unlock abilities. For example light tanks will eventually be able to rapid fire while moving. It's a nice system that's fun to use, though it's a bit too easy to get commanders for every branch assuming you play all the missions.
There are a few problems. Pathfinding as usual can be terrible. When tanks get into cramped spaces they don't know what to do. The game is also far too easy on the default settings. Only the super missions have any challenge. I recommend you turn up the difficulty if you're a Blitzkrieg 1 fan, but if you want the arcade experience you're good to go.
Graphically, the game is quite nice. I don't usually get hung up on graphics, so if your a graphics freak you may not care for them. The units look great. There's over 250 units in the game, and each is uniquely modeled. Their all quite well animated as well, though things can sometimes look weird. The environments have quite a bit of detail to them. Textures are a bit dated, and the foliage looks a bit rough. Overall though, the environments are nice.
The real joy of the engine is the amount of units onscreen, and when they start firing. Explosions look grand, and the muzzle flashes a significantly bright. I didn't notice much in the way of impressive shadow work, but when things blew up they looked real nice. The environments are also completely destructible. Watching entire towns devolve in rubble is particularly impressive (Nival seems to have a gift for this, check out Silent Storm).
The sound design is passable. The music has nice martial and emotional feel to it. The actual sounds of combat are solid. Nothing stands out as being spectacular, but nothing's bad either.
There's quite a bit of replay value here. There are mods, multiplayer, 3 lengthy campaigns. And you'll probably want to play through them again on harder difficulties to test your skills. Even if you don't, the tactical combat never gets old. Then there's a map editior which allows for entire custom campaigns.
Blitzkrieg 2 is a strong game. The graphics are nice and run on anything. The real strength is the gameplay. The difficulty can make it as easy or as hard as you wish. So if you want something tactically difficult, or laid-back and easy, Blitzkrieg 2 has it for you.