Hey that's my name!
All in all, it was worse, but i think worse would be a little bit too much. "A tad dissapointing" would be way better. I know it's easy to get caught up with nostalgia when comparing sequels and the original game, but there are some pretty big shortcomings this game has. In all my opinion, of course.
There are things that this game does way better over it's predecessor, the most strongest point being Spyke and rolling subs. Gone are the days of re-rolling for hours just to get brand-biased subs, now with both boosters and ability chunks you can practically get pures of any gear you want with some grinding. You can also now get even different main abilities, meaning you can have some say in how your squid looks in battle. No more of having every charger main wear the Cyan Trainers + Anchor Sweats + Tennis Headband, now you can be as fashionable as you want.
One thing that i also think got improved a lot is the sound design. Try firing some weapons in S1 and then in S2, in S2 they do really feel like guns that fire goopy fluids. It's something that is easily overlooked, but it still stands out for me regardless.
Now, for the bad:
I think the specials are one of the biggest problems i have with it, from a design standpoint. They don't feel powerful. They don't change the course of the battle like S1's specials did, where a Kraken could pop 2 teammates and even an entire team if the enemy is foolish enough. Broken? Depends on how you see it, the enemy could do the same. You could argue that it gave one teammate too much influence.
In Splatoon 2, specials feel more like tools to help you win the battle. Ink Storm is thrown, place will get hard for the enemy team to pull through. Get to someone close and then Splashdown. It's a lot more utilitarian than the first game. It works better for tournament/team play settings but it makes it miss that sense of chaos that the first game had, where you really felt like you could play hero.
There's also the matchmaking, something that really should be a minor complaint but it isn't. Level 6 players get to join level 50 people in Turf War, and they end about as well as you expect. It's unfair, and i can't really imagine it'll encourage newbies to keep playing to become good when they keep getting stomped round after round. And for the other people who get hung up with a G&K player, good luck, you're gonna need it!
And despite this game's regional matchmaking, i still find lag everywhere. Ballers explode after the special ended. A long-splatted player somehow is still able to throw bombs. People run out of spawn before the game begins. An inkling can materialize ink several feet in from of them. The infamous 16Hz tickrate isn't going to make things better, either.
I could probably fill up entire pages full with ranting, but I'll do my best to keep the remaining stuff short: Salmon Run is a lot of wasted potential and is now just an occasional grind, new weapons and classes added are also wasted potential, new ranked system is bad, story mode and lore being overall pretty disappointing, the new stage designs need a lot more variety, and no more squid jump.
I hold a different opinion than the most of the people in this thread and it feels like they made just about everything slightly worse this time around.
I ultimately felt like they tried to make it both appeal to casual and pro players, but ultimately they didn't succeed at both. Or it just got rushed, that could be it too.
