Any better than the first?
I had just finished Dante's Inferno when I started playing Darksiders and couldn't stop thinking that it was like they had ripped all the game mechanics from DI, butchered them to the point of crap and then threw a story at it.

Yes it borrows from a lot of other games with the mechanics, but I really liked the story. If you're going to be overly critical of it then I'd say skip it and play whatever tickles your fancy.

I'm not being "overly" critical... I was just judging the gameplay based on the fact that I had literally JUST got done beating the crap out of Dante's Inferno.
It just felt like a clumsy knock-off to me. So... back to the question at hand.... is number two better than number one?

Much. They added more RPG elements, the world is vast compared to the first one. Plus you're Death... so yeah