Beat. It was obvious from the very first stage that they expected you to have played the first game, because the difficulty was significantly higher. I used more or less the same combat strategies as the first game; sprint around wildly jousting, hold block to trade blows, or use the strafe button to backpedal with a ranged weapon. The only real difference I noticed was that crouching without a shield was sometimes effective while in the first game it was worthless. I did not have trouble with the first few levels. The cane weapon was not good; it seemed to do a little more damage than the small sword but was more awkward to use. The charge up ranged attack was ok. Then I used the hammer, which had annoyingly short range. By the freakshow level I opted to use the pistol to kill the fat women. The trampoline platforming was intimidating but once I got the hang of it I completed it without much trouble.

The pumpkin garden level was the only stage where I did not get the chalice on first attempt. This was because I could not save enough civilians, more often accidentally killing them. I repeated the entire level a few times before giving up and coming back later with the broad sword. I had a lot of trouble with the dankenstein level; god damn stupid time limits. Took several attempts, largely because I did not have enough hp to take risks. I tried going back to previous levels to farm health, but the health springs remembered being used! I then tried to farm health vials from the first level but that was such a piddly amount of health that it was not worth the effort. When I finally beat the level I was treated to the 2nd worst part of the game; the boxing boss fight between the monster and robot. Why the hell was this even in the game? So stupid. It was so frustrating that I put my PSP down a little too hard and it shut off. Then I had to beat that god forsaken level again. Good thing there was a checkpoint before the boxing match, or I would have fired this game straight into the garbage. It took over a dozen tries to win. Why was this designed to be so difficult? The only move worth using was the uppercut, which I had to awkwardly perform by pressing the analog stick. The strat was to block and avoid his combo, then do an uppercut and repeat until I lost both arms. Then play keepaway until the end of the round where I could throw the axe to get the limbs back. The boss was incredibly tricky once he lost all limbs and it became more about just getting some damage in while tanking hits. So stupid. Imagine if the black knight in Monty Python became more dangerous after having all 4 limbs chopped off. That is not how losing limbs works.

The next few levels were not bad, but I hated those damn cops that could not be killed. Had to dash away because fighting them did not knock them out anywhere near long enough. The vampire boss was like the awful clown puzzle in the first game, but it was actually not too difficult. Then the final level was the worst part of the game by far, possibly even worse than the airship in the first game. The outside was not too bad, but inside the cathedral was where the bullshit was cranked up to the max. It started with jumping onto a chandelier and then onto 2 platforms. This was unbelievably frustrating. I would line up for the jumps, start to move forward and then the camera would swing wildly so that I could not see where I was going. I pretty much had to do these jumps blind and hope for the best. Of course this led to more than a dozen game resets as I really did not have the hp to spare. I used the chicken to kill the shadow dogs to get as much health as possible, then came the moving platform challenge, which caused me to die probably another dozen times. I did not lose a lot of hp for each failed jump, but they had to make it just high enough to take a little bit of damage each time. After finally managing to make all the jumps without taking too much damage, they only gave 1 minute to get back to the entrance, complete with another god damn chandelier jump. It took several attempts to make it, and this was another point where I would have fired the game into the garbage if there was not a checkpoint save there. 1 minute was not enough time to reasonably get out given the terrible camera and awkward controls. I especially liked how often zoning through a door would plant the camera right in front of me facing the way I just came from. Dan, we're not taking a fucking selfie, move! The final boss took several tries but it was not difficult once I worked out the pattern. I used the magic sword whirlwind to kill the dog guy, then lighting on the green guy. I used the gatling on the final boss until I ran out, then threw the axe. I did try the other ranged weapons but they were not good. The main problem with this boss was that I had less than 50% hp and really could not afford to make many mistakes. What was even the point of having collectibles to increase max hp if you would never reasonably be able to have that much hp?

This game was significantly worse than the first, and I never want to play it again. Though it had the same basic gameplay and controls, and even some improvements, the overall quality was worse. It seemed like there were fewer control options because I remember using circle to block and triangle to jump in the first game, but they could not be switched here. It was more awkward to press triangle to block and press X to attack at the same time. The level select screen was lame compared to the overworld of the first. There was less care put into the game, less character, less humor. Some of the puzzles were very creative, while only a few were annoying. Almost every boss fight was gimmicky to the point where they ceased to be boss fights and were more like puzzles or minigames. A boss fight should be a more challenging extension of the combat system, but most of these bosses were not damaged directly by your weapons. The only boss that was proper was Jack the ripper, because you had to actually hit him with your weapon to deplete his health, while dealing with the gimmicks of avoiding him while he was invulnerable and healing the girl. And of course the terrible camera and platforming. I especially hated double pressing the D pad to run. He should have been running all the time by default with holding L1 to walk instead of the switch target, which I never used. Despite all the game's problems, the only thing that absolutely needed to be fixed was the lack of farming hp between levels. Either make the springs reset, allow quitting a completed level to save vial gains, or best of all put a full heal spring in the hub.

6.8/10