God of War II is even more badass than the first!
The combat is intuitive and leaves you the choice of simply button mashing or trying to string up ridiculous combos... the later giving you more red orbs to upgrade your powers. Speaking of powers... pretty much all of them are useful during the course of the game. You even get a couple more weapons to compliment the good ole' Athena Blades. All in all.. you have a lot of stuff to dish out pain and it's GREAT!
The pacing of the game is one of the best improvements over the original. The game evenly challenges you against hordes of monsters, environment puzzles and boss fights. The puzzles are all well done and won't take you too long to figure them out. The distance between save points is just right. If you die, the game will respawn you a few steps back. Some parts of the game will give you a challenge but will never frustrate you.
The story is less personal this time around because we know Kratos's background and what he needs to do (change his fate and kill Zeus), but it's still a lot of fun.
The first game I was able to finish a little under 9 hrs on the first playthru. This one I had a little under 11 hrs so it is a longer game. Once you finish it once you can replay the game with all the weapons upgrades and such which is nice.
Anyway, if you loved the original.. there's no reason why you shouldn't try the sequel, I personally think it's a slighty better game.