Starting with the second game, the series got miles better. The second game being my personal favorite. The gameplay introduced in the first game is mostly intact. Move around your 3 by 3 area, use battlechips, kill the enemy. This takes that and improves it threefold. First, the combat is faster and much more stylish. There is an emphasis on what are called Program Advances. Meaning you take 3, sometimes 4 or more battlechips in a certain order, and they make a combo attack. For instance, combining sword, widesword, and longsword makes the program advance called Lifesword. It's a sword with an extended range that does 400 damage. Next they introduced the * code. The * code means that that battle chip can be used with anything. You can pick out some J coded chips and a * coded chip and use them all at once. The game even improved on the plot (which I will get into) and my favorite aspect of the series, the postgame.
The plot this time around is really dark and kind of grim. It focuses on a criminal organization called Gospel and their plan to create a 'suprnavi' (*spoiler* that would be Bass). To do this they need certain programs located throughout world. Here's the thing that makes the plot dark, they are legitimately evil! They kill people, a lot of people, and when they're not doing that they're putting people in serious risk. Here's a brief rundown of what they do, blow up a subway station, try to crash a plane, infiltrate a secret Net-Police meeting and kill half of them, attempt to gas an 8 year-old, overthrow a country's net-government, the list goes on! Gospel is legitimately intimidating but the payoff at the end of the game where you learn about the leader is meh.
The villains this time around are Airman (Megaman 2), Quickman (MM2), Cutman (MM1), Shadowman (MM3), Knightman (MM6), Magnetman (MM3), and Freezeman (MM7). As for optional encounters (secret bosses included) there is Gutsman (MM1), Toadman (MM4), Gateman (original), Thunderman (also original), Snakeman (MM3), Heatman (MM2), Protoman (various), Pharohman (MM4), Napalman (MM5), and Planetman (original but stupid). Once again the bosses are the highlight because there are some unique gimmicks. When you fight Toadman, he stands on lily pads that travel across his end of the battlefield. Against Cutman, there is a gigantic boulder in the middle of your battlefield forcing you to go around in a circle. Lastly, Knightman is invincible unless he changes color. The bosses are really fun if a bit easy (if you know what you're doing).
The difficulty for this game is definitely there, Airman (first boss) is piss easy but after him it gets more and more challenging. Quickman is incredibly difficult the first time you fight him, as is Shadowman. The game has kind of a difficulty spike part way through but it's relatively easy all the way through, even the final boss is easy. It's a lot harder than the first one because this time the bosses have a lot of hp and they do a lot of damage! This is a good thing.
What this game has over all of the others (except maybe the third one), is an expansive postgame. The first game had a postgame but there wasn't much to it. This game has a gigantic postgame. In the course of the story you get licenses that admit you to different parts of the game to progress the plot. You only get two of them and there are 6 in total. You can go after the rest of them and doing so allows you to access some of the harder areas in the game. In this game there is an area called the Undernet, for plot purposes you only need to 3 or 4 areas of it, there are 8 areas of this place. After beating the game you can get access to Undernet 7 and 8 and even the secret WWW area. That is where the secret bosses Napalman, Pharohman, and Planetman lie. The game definitely keeps you busy with the postgame because there is a lot to do. I highly recommend this game, it's not the best in the series but it is my favorite.
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