Prepare to get your Bloodlust on, again...
It takes place about 65 year after the first one left off, with Rayne still searching for her father, the Vampire Overlord Kagan. The game opens up with an FMV of Rayne in a sexy black dress arriving at a party thrown by one of her many vampire siblings whom she wishes to destroy.
The graphics, audio, gameplay, controls...everything is greatly improved in this sequel. A couple of cool additions are the feed fatality moves. There are 12 of them in the game designed as an alternate to just feeding off an enemy until he dies. You can start feeding to get your health up and then kill him/her while feeding to get a boost in your rage meter.
Speaking of which, you can also increase the size of your health and rage meters by performing puzzle kills. Basically, this is when you can kick/slash/harpoon an enemy into a fireplace, out a window, or over a railing on a higher floor. When this happens, an icon encompassing both meters slides up. When it goes all the way to the right, the meters fill up, and the icon slides back to the left. This keeps happening until your meters reach maximum size (which is almost 2X the original size). this helps immensely in the later parts of the game where the enemies get significantly harder to defeat.
Overall, a wonderful playing experience with some sweet extras that are all available when you finish the game. Among these are different costumes for Rayne, a level select, and a trailer for the upcoming Bloodrayne movie.
If you liked the first game, you'll LOVE this one. If you've never played the first one, get it first then get this one. There are a couple of references to Brimstone Society in this one which will go over a person's head if they didn't play the first one. (For those of you who haven't played the first one, Brimstone Society is the organization that asked Rayne to join their ranks at the beginning of the original Bloodrayne after observing her fighting skills against a couple of vampires).
Other than that there are little or no references to the first one, but I would recomend playing both.
Prepare to get your Bloodlust on, again...