Wasn't for me. I never got the chance to play the first game so I don't know how the two compare mechanics-wise but from what I've been told, they're fairly similar. That said I was severely let down by this game. Advertisements proclaimed your ability to make crazy and impractical weapons to slaughter zombies with, all while wearing equally crazy or silly outfits. While this is fundamentally true, the game doesn't give you the time to really poke around with things. It wants, no FORCES you to continue directly from one objective to another because you're always (ALWAYS) on a strict timetable. Even if you 'pause' the game to check out your status screen, the timers are still going. Not to mention the main story missions are on a shared timetable so if you take too long getting through one objective, you find yourself with next to no time left for the next one, causing you to not only fail that mission but fail the storyline. When you do inevitably fail, you're given the option to continue putzing around or restart the game, but with everything but the items you had been carrying at the time.

And to those that say "Oh the game is -meant- to be played multiple times', FUCK YOU. I have no problem with a game with various incentives to play through again. I DO have a problem when one of those incentives is ACTUALLY BEATING THE FUCKING GAME. I can deal with failing a mission and having to restart it. When failing a mission means I have to start over and do all the previous missions again, I don't give a damn if I get to keep my stats. I think that's bullshit game design.

So, today I took the game back to GameStop and got Bayonetta. We'll see how things go with that.