Beat on Hard. I tried out the 3 characters and settled on playing as ridiculous clown suit man himself. I did not like the big green guy with his lack of speed and range. I did like the girl, especially how her power attack had decent range; might play again as her. This game felt much better to control than the 1st game, but it was also more difficult. I found it much harder to avoid taking damage, many of the regular enemies were mini bosses, earlier bosses came back as mini bosses, and most bosses had cheap attacks. I was save state scumming almost every few seconds. Grabbing and throwing was probably the best move, and did impressive damage. I also liked grabbing then doing 2 weak punches followed by a heavy punch finisher. I really liked the brutal way that smashed the enemy into the floor, but the damage was not appropriately high for the time investment. The best damage was the simple punch combo, combined with the dodge roll to get close and maybe avoid attacks, but this was only good if I could get 1st hit and no other enemies were around. The dash attack was not very useful and too difficult to pull off with double pressing the direction; a control scheme I loathe. The power attack was useless. Jump kick was nice and cheap; good for tough enemies and multiple opponents. Jump punch not so much, though it had the advantage of being faster.

I beat the 1st boss using the ultimate ranged blasts because of his ridiculously cheap attacks that I could not figure out how to avoid. The next time I got him with jump kicks. The next few bosses I got with grabs and/or punch combos by flanking from another lane. The disc throwing boss gave me a bit of a hard time as I lost a lot of health from the previous boss; I only had a tiny sliver left. I noticed that dying resets the ultimate counter, so since I had 10 I used them all for ranged blasts and wrecked that boss, barely scraping by with that sliver of hp. Then the teleporting boss with 3 forms, who I thought was the final boss because of the forms and how much trouble he gave me. So many cheap attacks, especially the 2nd form with those dash attacks. I did manage to beat all forms without dying or using ultimates though. Then the final boss from the 1st game, who was actually not quite as cheap this time around. He had openings to be exploited when he jumped and dashed. The final boss was stupidly cheap; no attacks or movements, just a bunch of indestructible balls randomly floating around. Who thought this was good design? I could not figure out a way to hit the boss without taking hits so I burned my ultimates and spent 2 or 3 lives tanking the hits.

This game fixed some of the shortcomings of the 1st game, but in doing so made it more generic.

8.2/10