A strikingly major improvement over the first in terms of gameplay. The traversal and combat feel stronger and more complex than the original significantly. In particular, the movement is far faster than the original with multiple ways to get from place to place. The combat is much the same, but you have far more options to deal with enemies. The enemy design in particular is a MASSIVE improvement over the original with the symbiotes in particular feeling extremely dangerous to fight against but never frustrating. The only complaint I have with the gameplay is the parry which doesn't mesh well with the base enemy combat since it requires you to divert all attention away from what you're currently doing to time a specific attack. The parry itself works well, though, especially for the boss fights. The boss fights are easily the highlight of this game, which is shocking since they were incredibly forgettable in the first two games. Each boss has multiple phases, fun and challenging movesets, and unique encounter mechanics. There's also a lot of them, almost 10 in the entire game each with at least 2 phases and many having more.

The biggest reason this game gets half a star knocked off are pacing issues. The game needed to be longer to cover everything it does, and at points, some character beats don't hit as hard as they could or conflict with one another. Peter's symbiote arc in this game is actually fairly unique. Instead of resulting in increased rage from Peter exclusively, his frustration comes from a place of exhaustion. Peter is constantly pulled between his duties to Miles as a mentor, Harry as a friend, MJ as a partner, and the increasing feelings of futility of being a hero if his villains keep coming back to haunt him. He has also been unable to move past his grief over the death of Aunt May from the first game, and blames himself for her passing. This culminates in an excellent boss fight against him as Miles, but it would have been stronger if Peter had just been allowed to use the symbiote for a bit longer. Venom has the same issue with a excellent playable sequence for him and a wonderful final boss but little time with him outside of that. Few things in the game's story are executed badly, but like other bloated spider-man stories (Spider-Man 3, Amazing Spider-Man 2, and even No Way Home), parts are sacrificed to flesh out too many characters. I hope this can be resolved in the DLC and Spider-Man 3 but with the sudden introduction of Silk in the credits, I am concerned.

Overall, though, this is the best game of the current trilogy by a decent margin. Returning to the combat and side content of the original will be awkward even if the original's story is paced a bit better.