Blasphemous 2 answers a lot of the niggling complaints that the first one received.

Pros: Your character moves faster, you're given a fast travel method much faster, having three weapons instead of one improves the combat variety [b]a bit[/b] (Ignoring that the mace is so much better than the other two weapons), you're given a more concrete direction on where to go, (via immediate waypoint markers to your first few bosses), you don't die instantly in pitfalls & spikes anymore, and magic is usefully overpowered. (Among other things that I'm sure I'll find worthy of praise.)

Cons: This is starting to feel like the Dark Souls 2 of Blasphemous. (In that, the design of Darks Souls 1 is unforgiving. Being challenging in unexpected and cruel ways. Versus DS2's design philosophy of "this was made by assholes".) And so far, these bosses are fucking obnoxious. The tutorial one pushes you to pick one of the faster starting weapons (to match its own speed) only to give you the much more useful mace later on. The next two each have a 2nd phase that have an unavoidable attack that will kill you, that made me resort to 'Unga bunga'ing' my way through them/abusing the magic fire attack. (So the less strategy/thought I used, the better off I was.) 

Both having their own obnoxious gimmick on top of them. (One giving you a side companion that offers help. Whose only there to trip up players of the 1st one, who knows the side companion dies if you allow them to help. And this one apparently *needs* to help & is completely useless in the actual fight.) The next one CAN instantly kill you and push you off her tiny boss arena. [b][i]Genuinely, fuck this boss.[/i][/b] 

Now I'm on my way to the three-phase/duo boss, after finding every other available route closed off. Only to get halfway through the level and receive a fucking tutorial tip on how to open certain doors with the sword that I fucking started the game with (that were spread throughout all the other previous areas.) So this fucking game is forcing me to back travel (once again) through all the areas I've basically finished. 

Eh: I'm sure the cartoon/anime cutscenes ate up a decent chunk of their budget. But I don't know if some of them fit tonally to the game I'm playing. (Don't think they're an improvement over the pixel art of the 1st one.) Also, I don't think the music is as good as the first one either.

So, it's been a mixed reaction thus far. (But if it's both *supposedly* easier and shorter than the first one. I'll likely still finish it.)

Edit: The duo boss did indeed suck too. The third phase is just a clusterfuck. Had a glitch where the boss health bar remained on my screen until I restarted the game. Saw something on Steam say the same in February and the Devs responded with a "we're definitely fixing this issue" lul. Yeah, sure you are. And I randomly started to drop frames in the next level which was completely empty. So yeah. Nowhere near on par with the first one, which didn't have these problems.