I've always called this game high-speed chess, the weapon combinations and how they interact with the game world open up so many possibilites. There is genuine strategy you must use and think of on the fly, always thinking 3 moves ahead at 200 miles per hour.
e.g. If someone has a rear weapon, it's better to pit them from the side with a blast of your shotgun and watch them spin into an explosive barrel. If someone is far away, you can shoot a magnetized trailer and crush them.

The armor system amplifies the depth of Battlelines even more. Each part of the car has seperate health, so spreading fire will never work. You must always position yourself safely and aim ahead, each projectile obeys physics.
Your choice of weapon is just as important. You can balance output with a defensive and offensive approach or go in guns blazing with 2 cannons and no self-preservation.

Even the map design was done with combat in mind, explosives litter corners and trucks roam the streets, but special set-pieces are the real treat. You can drop a train station on a pack of racers then watch as the incoming trains collapse onto unsuspecting onlookers. You can crush enemies with boulders and watch as they blow up nearby gas stations. Some of them open up new areas entirely, like the tower which caves the ground in when collapsed, giving access to powerups underground.

Speaking of destruction, this game has plenty. And that's an understatement. Everything you can set your eyes on is destructible, every building reveals an interior which can be destroyed even further. It's the only game I've played where chaos is non-stop, no wonder the PS3 couldn't run this game. Even the cars have unbelievably realistic damage modeling, crumpling and turning into a charred mess with your driver ragdolling against the windshield, pieces of your engine littered on the asphalt. It's not just the destruction, environments are detailed and have their own color palettes, cars are modeled down to their badging and rims.
The technology was ahead of its time, and the game's scope was too big for variety. Lacking in content but making up for it with quality, mostly due to re-using assets from Full Auto 1, but updating and improving everything that was carried over. The game was made in less than a year afterall.

The sense of speed is exaggerated greatly with smooth but jittery camera shake and slick motion blur that doesn't blind you.
The real feeling is inside the interactive soundtrack, mostly consisting of remixes from the first game. The soundtrack has a version for every action and multiple ones can be mixed together, like 1st place and boosting themes which can turn into one, orchestral and industrial beats mixing into eachother.

The handling model also plays into this. It takes some time to get used to the twitchiness of it all, but once you learn how to take corners properly, you will fly past them at top speed. It highly encourages the use of the handbrake to make quick adjustments and sharp snaps, even entire 180s.

While not a problem to me, the difficulty of the career might be a negative to some people, especially around the Sceptre chapter. I've seen people abandon the game there due to how hard it can become. You need to learn how some missions work and carve out your path. The one time it's a negative no matter what is when the physics act up and fling you into a barrel roll. For that we have something called unwreck.

If you thought Battlelines ran out of ammunition, you're wrong. Unwreck lets you rewind time, simple as that. What's not simple is that it's a part of your nitrous bar, you'll have to manage your energy and make sure you always have enough for both. Play it too safe or too dangerous and you'll end up dead. Energy management is key.
A bonus of having unwreck is one-touch replay. Fancy way of saying instant replay, you can watch one anytime you want with the press of a button.

The two remaining things to talk about would be the story and online. The story is mostly an excuse to unlock content and explain the spy hunter aesthetic. The Ascendants have taken over Meridian City, infiltrate their events and complete tasks given to you by an AI named Sage. It's an unforgiving campaign. I won't tell you anything else, there are spoilers and twists.

The online, while unplayable, had many exclusive arena and racing gamemodes with stat tracking, including rivalries and more. It's sad to see a special part of the game gone, I've tried to OpenSpy patch it before but the game uses tools.gamespy.net which isn't hosted by OpenSpy.

If you ever get Full Auto 2, emulate it on RPCS3. It's a surprisingly lightweight and easy game to run, reaching 60 FPS even on my dying 6 year old laptop.

We do not talk about the PSP port.