I feel really, really bad by doing this. Look, I love the first game, it's probably my favorite indie game of all time, but this? What the hell, Dennaton?
I find Hotline Miami 2 to be a very unenjoyable experience, and the main reason for that has to be the level design. This game basically consists of ridiculously open football field sized buildings made entirely out of glass that are packed with dogs, fat dudes, and gun-wielding enemies that react to you in a nanosecond and kill you off-screen. This game is fucking hard, but not in a good, fun way like the first game. It's hard in a frustrating, bullshitty way.
In Hotline Miami 1, when you died, 90% of the time it was totally your fault. This time around though, 90% of your deaths are due to the god awful level design or to some cheap glitch. Hope you like doing nothing but using guns to try and snipe off-screen enemies two miles away while constantly holding shift for the entirety of the game, something that contrasts greatly with how you could almost exclusively use melee weapons to complete most levels in Hotline Miami 1 (with the exception of quickly picking up a gun to kill fat guys or enemies in inaccessible areas). The fact is, there are less ways to get through each level compared to HM1 since the level design often forces you to play in a specific way only. The game barely ever allows for creative strategies. The first game encouraged you to be reckless, it told you it was okay to fail, but this game forces you to be slow and methodical, which just feels like the antithesis to what Hotline Miami should be about. Something else that contributes to the levels being poorly designed is readability, which can often be abysmal. Sometimes it's very hard to differentiate between what you can be shot through and what is proper cover. Honestly, most stages feel like they were ripped out of some hardmode fangame: they're poorly designed and unfairly hard.
On the technical side of things, this game is an absolute mess. Hotline Miami 1 wasn't exactly polished but, in my experience, I've encountered far more glitches with this game that often got me killed, and the fact that a single floor in HM2 can take several minutes to get through just makes dying to a cheap glitch MUCH more frustrating than when it happened in the first game. The enemies react more like robots than ever, like how common it is for them to witness dozens of their buddies dying right in front of them and not react at all, as well as hearing gunshots going off right beside them and not get alerted. There are some "special" enemies like the dogs and the prisoners that run at a supersonic speed to try to strangle you that can just materialize through doors, and if you are even near a door when one of them is chasing you have absolutely zero chances of surviving. Also, HM2 has a lot of input lag by default because turning VSync off in-game doesn't work, you're gonna have to do it manually through your graphics card's control panel. Wish I knew this earlier, because I played through the entire game (INCLUDING HARD MODE) with that horrible input lag at first.
The game carries something that was a minor annoyance in the first game and turns it into a major one: there's no way to know what weapon you'll get from a pile of guns. Since the best strategy to kill enemies in this fucking game is to show yourself for a second to lure them to a corner, you'll just end up with dozens of weapons stacked on top of each other, and then you'll try to pick up one of them to kill that fat guy that is running towards you and you'll just die horribly because you picked up a gun with no bullets or a melee weapon.
Another thing that heavily frustrates me is how you are now unable to get points by knocking enemies down, unlike the first game. It's absolutely infuriating to accidentally knock over a large group of enemies now, since HM2 has excruciatingly long animations for executions and no way to cancel them, so knocking enemies over can easily make you lose you combo or even get you killed. Thanks to this mechanic I never even try to go for highscores here, which is something I loved doing in HM1.
And then there's hard mode. I'm willing to believe this is just a sick practical joke implemented by Dennaton to laugh at our faces. It's pretty much impossible to finish the game on it without cheaply dying at least a couple hundred times. Forcing myself to beat Hotline Miami 2 on hard mode was one of the worst experiences of my life, not even joking. I got no gratification or feeling of accomplishment from it, just a feeling of "thank god that's over."
Now, some people might appeal to the braindead """argument""" of "you're just bad at the game" while ignoring all of my points entirely. My dude, just check my Steam stats for both this game and the first. I got all the achievements, which means I finished the game on hard mode, and I'm able to get an S ranking on most stages with relative ease, so these opinions are coming from someone who's very experienced with both Hotline Miami games and probably much better than you are. I don't wanna come off as being arrogant here, but some people are just unbelievably dense and can't provide a single counter-point to refute me outside of that.
One thing I feel like could have been done to improve the game quite a bit would be the implementation of a system where, after you beat the level for the first time using the character that's supposed to be there for the story, you could choose any other character when you play that level again, like in the LEGO games. Maybe let you play as Jacket (with all the original masks) and maybe even Biker. From a story perspective that wouldn't make sense of course, but why should that matter? Fun/replayability/variety should be the priority here.
Now, for some actual positives. The soundtrack is absolutely incredible, as expected. Go and listen to Roller Mobster, The Way Home, Le Perv, In The Face of Evil, Bloodline... Hell, just listen to the entire damn thing. Graphics also look fantastic. Very stylized like the first game while managing to look much smoother and being able to pack much more detail into every level. Only problem is, that detail can sometimes make enemies harder to see, and there were times when I died to an enemy that was behind foliage or something like that, but again, that's more of a problem with the level design than anything else. Animations are also pretty good and generally smoother than the first game. And finally, I actually think they did a pretty good job with writing an interesting story, deepening the lore, and tying everything together with the first game, but (without spoiling anything) the ending just felt like a lazy cop-out.
So, in conclusion, if you're a HUGE fan of Hotline Miami 1 you might want to grab this for the story, but if you're just looking for some reckless, fast-paced and fun gameplay you're better off playing through the first game again.
I find Hotline Miami 2 to be a very unenjoyable experience, and the main reason for that has to be the level design. This game basically consists of ridiculously open football field sized buildings made entirely out of glass that are packed with dogs, fat dudes, and gun-wielding enemies that react to you in a nanosecond and kill you off-screen. This game is fucking hard, but not in a good, fun way like the first game. It's hard in a frustrating, bullshitty way.
In Hotline Miami 1, when you died, 90% of the time it was totally your fault. This time around though, 90% of your deaths are due to the god awful level design or to some cheap glitch. Hope you like doing nothing but using guns to try and snipe off-screen enemies two miles away while constantly holding shift for the entirety of the game, something that contrasts greatly with how you could almost exclusively use melee weapons to complete most levels in Hotline Miami 1 (with the exception of quickly picking up a gun to kill fat guys or enemies in inaccessible areas). The fact is, there are less ways to get through each level compared to HM1 since the level design often forces you to play in a specific way only. The game barely ever allows for creative strategies. The first game encouraged you to be reckless, it told you it was okay to fail, but this game forces you to be slow and methodical, which just feels like the antithesis to what Hotline Miami should be about. Something else that contributes to the levels being poorly designed is readability, which can often be abysmal. Sometimes it's very hard to differentiate between what you can be shot through and what is proper cover. Honestly, most stages feel like they were ripped out of some hardmode fangame: they're poorly designed and unfairly hard.
On the technical side of things, this game is an absolute mess. Hotline Miami 1 wasn't exactly polished but, in my experience, I've encountered far more glitches with this game that often got me killed, and the fact that a single floor in HM2 can take several minutes to get through just makes dying to a cheap glitch MUCH more frustrating than when it happened in the first game. The enemies react more like robots than ever, like how common it is for them to witness dozens of their buddies dying right in front of them and not react at all, as well as hearing gunshots going off right beside them and not get alerted. There are some "special" enemies like the dogs and the prisoners that run at a supersonic speed to try to strangle you that can just materialize through doors, and if you are even near a door when one of them is chasing you have absolutely zero chances of surviving. Also, HM2 has a lot of input lag by default because turning VSync off in-game doesn't work, you're gonna have to do it manually through your graphics card's control panel. Wish I knew this earlier, because I played through the entire game (INCLUDING HARD MODE) with that horrible input lag at first.
The game carries something that was a minor annoyance in the first game and turns it into a major one: there's no way to know what weapon you'll get from a pile of guns. Since the best strategy to kill enemies in this fucking game is to show yourself for a second to lure them to a corner, you'll just end up with dozens of weapons stacked on top of each other, and then you'll try to pick up one of them to kill that fat guy that is running towards you and you'll just die horribly because you picked up a gun with no bullets or a melee weapon.
Another thing that heavily frustrates me is how you are now unable to get points by knocking enemies down, unlike the first game. It's absolutely infuriating to accidentally knock over a large group of enemies now, since HM2 has excruciatingly long animations for executions and no way to cancel them, so knocking enemies over can easily make you lose you combo or even get you killed. Thanks to this mechanic I never even try to go for highscores here, which is something I loved doing in HM1.
And then there's hard mode. I'm willing to believe this is just a sick practical joke implemented by Dennaton to laugh at our faces. It's pretty much impossible to finish the game on it without cheaply dying at least a couple hundred times. Forcing myself to beat Hotline Miami 2 on hard mode was one of the worst experiences of my life, not even joking. I got no gratification or feeling of accomplishment from it, just a feeling of "thank god that's over."
Now, some people might appeal to the braindead """argument""" of "you're just bad at the game" while ignoring all of my points entirely. My dude, just check my Steam stats for both this game and the first. I got all the achievements, which means I finished the game on hard mode, and I'm able to get an S ranking on most stages with relative ease, so these opinions are coming from someone who's very experienced with both Hotline Miami games and probably much better than you are. I don't wanna come off as being arrogant here, but some people are just unbelievably dense and can't provide a single counter-point to refute me outside of that.
One thing I feel like could have been done to improve the game quite a bit would be the implementation of a system where, after you beat the level for the first time using the character that's supposed to be there for the story, you could choose any other character when you play that level again, like in the LEGO games. Maybe let you play as Jacket (with all the original masks) and maybe even Biker. From a story perspective that wouldn't make sense of course, but why should that matter? Fun/replayability/variety should be the priority here.
Now, for some actual positives. The soundtrack is absolutely incredible, as expected. Go and listen to Roller Mobster, The Way Home, Le Perv, In The Face of Evil, Bloodline... Hell, just listen to the entire damn thing. Graphics also look fantastic. Very stylized like the first game while managing to look much smoother and being able to pack much more detail into every level. Only problem is, that detail can sometimes make enemies harder to see, and there were times when I died to an enemy that was behind foliage or something like that, but again, that's more of a problem with the level design than anything else. Animations are also pretty good and generally smoother than the first game. And finally, I actually think they did a pretty good job with writing an interesting story, deepening the lore, and tying everything together with the first game, but (without spoiling anything) the ending just felt like a lazy cop-out.
So, in conclusion, if you're a HUGE fan of Hotline Miami 1 you might want to grab this for the story, but if you're just looking for some reckless, fast-paced and fun gameplay you're better off playing through the first game again.