Excellent middle for a (should be) awesome trilogy).
Playing the second one only continued my desire to watch this series grow.
Gameplay: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The kill animations are even more brutal than in the first game. They even incorporated new variations to the original weapons. The only reason it didn't get a 10 is because some attacks leave you wide open for attack and you can't break out of it in time to guard. Also, sometimes the game would misread an attack and put you in quite the predicament.
Graphics: Even better than the first one. The skins, cracked wall, stone carvings, all amazingly done. Even the frame rate for animations kept up fairly well (sometimes it would just lag horribly--granted, that's with lots of enemies on the screen).
Sound: Great musical score. It had a old, mythical feel to it, while being dark and ominous. If I would say anything that needs to be fixed, more variety.
Value: Here's where it starts to die out on me. I liked replaying it on different modes. However, I didn't like how the "bonus feature" only worked on difficulties you've already beaten. I'm not saying that it should have been possible to go from easy mode to Titan mode with all upgraded stuff, but at least allow SOME transferability. Speaking of Titan mode, it is evil. Moreso towards the beginning, when you have no skills/upgrades and almost everything kills you/puts you in critical in 1 hit while your damage output seems to be cut in half along with enemy defense skyrocketing. Not to discount the importance of difficulty, but you want to keep the gamer wanting to play rather than almost forcing people to want to quit.
Reviewer's Tilt: Great game. A few minor flaws that grow and really shine in the harder modes keep this game lower than it should be and deserves. The Challenge of the Titans was kind of badly ordered (the hardest challenge was the second one). Other than that, this game is definitely worth the money.