I haven't played the Pocky & Rocky games for a while, so I opted to replay them this week and TBH, unpopular opinion as it is, I think I just vastly prefer P&R2 to 1?

Sure, the slide is gone, but on the flipside the enemies aren't generally as lightning swift anymore. They tend to have more telegraphed attacks as well, such as the lightning demons who can be dodged in advance once the player figures out where their magic spawn from. This is remarkably forgiving for endgame bosses, actually.

In fact, the whole game could be described as easier than 1. The player can collect more charms and bunny ears for extra hit points all across the board. The shop system really helps, with it even being an early game that gave out guides in-game much like Forgotten World. The partner attacks deal massive damage to bosses, especially Rocky's if timed properly for each boss.

As somebody who tends to prefer harder games, I should in theory prefer P&R1. However, the consequences of the system changes here means the player can be more aggressive until the last level which makes the end's methodical pacing more like a cool change of pace. I find that pacing change to be really cool. The other thing is, frankly, co-op games are almost always harder in multiplayer for the resource splitting alone, to say nothing of other factors P&R1 suffers from like screen scrolling issues in multiplayer. Of course, P&R1 tried to band-aid this with the solution each player would collect a different type of powerup, but health pickups are still split, not to mention the screen scroll with the aggressive enemies and stage hazards makes it very easy to lose lives and need to continue off the other player's stock. I respect the effort to accommodate the multiplayer mode, but it's simply not something that will be reasonable to finish for most players. Contrast that to Pocky & Rocky 2 which I finished with a partner who never played the game before in only 2 sittings, especially helped by the new password system. Hell, it's one of the only arcadey co-op games I can think of that's actually easier in multiplayer, since player 2 can make full use of elements like homing attacks.

I guess to tldr it, this is the definitive Pocky & Rocky game to me. I love the shops, partner system, new enemies, visuals, and so forth. I respect 1 and had fun challenging myself to beat it for a playthrough or 2, but I really enjoy 2's flow and could see myself coming back to it again.

A slight improvement, maybe. There's more emphasis on partners and such this time around, and there are more of them too. The weapons issue from the first game is pretty much nonexistent here, and overall I thought this one was slightly easier. They're pretty neck and neck though, honestly. I much prefer the movement in the original, seeing as there's no sliding and such here.

You'd think this was the definitive one to play but despite the improvements it feels about the same when all's said and done. Not to say either are bad, quite the opposite in fact. Maybe try both if you're interested, though 2 is my personal preference by a small margin.