improves on a lot of what the first game did, making it a lot harder, adding more level design variety, and even adding a few cool little on-rails shooter type levels. this game definitely feels like it tries to encapsulate the difficulty of original megaman style action platformers during their time in the nes/snes era, and sometimes it does a good job at that, and sometimes it's to the game's detriment. the parts that genuinely feel challenging to get through but are still fair are great, it feels nice to overcome some of the challenges the game has to offer. then, sometimes you'll be stuck on a part of a level that you have to keep replaying over and over again because you didnt see an obstacle coming until it was too late like on the panda level, or sometimes the difficulty just comes from something that feels really awkward and unnatural like the gravity switching areas towards the end of the game. overall this game is a huge upgrade over the first, it just feels so much more full and a lot of fun to play, even if it only took me an hour and 20 minutes, but i think had the game not had as many lame artificial difficulty segments i wouldve rated it a bit higher