Some subtle things keep it below the first one. Mainly the weapons being more situational, some of the hidden collectables being straight up horseshit to get to, either due to some opaque hiding spot that you’d never find without scanning the entire map with the radar upgrade (which even then sometimes doesn’t work as intended), or some of the pixel perfect platforming it demands of you, and the story, which is more elaborate than X1’s, but also more wooden and intrusive. I compare X1 and X2 to the movies The Raid and The Raid 2. In both cases, the second technically has more of a story, but it dwells on itself more leading to more bloat, whereas the first is more simple but more honest about what it is and more focused as a result.

Other than that though, almost everything else is at least as refined as it was in X1, and I love having the dash boost right from the get go.