Some screens of my run through the second game. Like the first one except with more lag, crunchier sound, more interesting physics, and some giant pun bag floating in space. I quite enjoyed it!
When I played the sequel soon after the original game, it felt like the sequel was just overall better but I might have been telling myself that because of the minor physics changes (and because it is a sequel). But when I replay the original I'm not left feeling like I'm playing the worse game, so I guess they're both just kinda the same thing for the most part.
Yeah it definitely exudes the Expansion Pack Sequel trope very much, not that it's a bad thing because I quite enjoyed the first anyway, so by extension I like the sequel too. Not one I can say is "better" than the other, really.
Incidentally, I ended up trying the other two games in the series as well. Well, sort of--Pocket MuuMuu appears to just be a PocketStation minigame grindfest, so I spent more time RE-ing one of the file formats than I did actually playing it. Also Robbit mon Dieu, whose intro video and character designs I find to be absolutely adorable, but I find the actual gameplay to be rather boring in comparison to the main games, where it has you snuff out the points on the map and do one very specific thing on each of those points.
Also it just so happens that the two text-heavier entries were the ones that didn't make it out of Japan, and my knowledge of the language is still roughly at the level of a 5-year-old, and there are no fan translations likely because the series' file formats haven't been cracked, likely because of how convoluted they can get (the ".EAR" format , for example, is in all the games, but I didn't know what any part of it really was until looking at the later ones), so yeah.
Oh dang, Jumping Flash. Should've probably checked this forum a bit more, the Jumping Flash games rule!
I think the big thing about the second game compared to the first is that the first game kinda just arbitrarily has two loops with relatively smaller changes, whereas the second game actually has more in the way of completely new (and/or far more heavily remixed) levels on its second story loop?
Combine with things like the jump meter, the slightly more polished visuals, etc., and, well, yeah, while it may mostly be the same as the first game, I do think it's worth a mention it's the slightly more complete feeling game overall due to all those smaller factors adding up.
...and, in fairness, while 2 lags more than 1 on average, there's a level in 1 that I recall having... uh... really bad lag issues that actually were bad enough to hurt gameplay more than I ever recall any of the lag in 2 hurting it, weirdly?
...ah well. Anyway, both games are actually really good. Nice art style, good music, plays surprisingly well for such an early take on a 3D platformer, you name it.