Growing up, I never owned the other two Sly games. I had the first one and enjoyed the everloving crap out of it, but I never quite gravitated towards it as much as I did the Ratchet & Clank series. Sly had its charms, but it wasn't a Lombax and his robot blowing stuff up with cool weapons. It wouldn't be til years later, in 2019, when I'd replay the R&C trilogy and played the Jak series year prior. So by the time I got a brand spanking new gaming PC I custom built in 2020, my consoles in the closet, I figure I should give emulating the series a shot. It took me 4 years to get around to game 1 again, but by the time I did, you bet your bottom dollar I jumped right into its sequel.
Sly 2 is like the Arkham City of PS2 sequels. While it has its jank and a few places it doesn't hold up in, the end product is a great, if sometimes padded, sequel that I admire. There's still problems here aside padding, like Sly still having moments where he magnetizes onto something I don't want him to, the camera inversion still not being fixed and there not being a way to fix it, and some levels dragging a bit longer than I'd like, but Sly 2 kicks so much ass.
Visuals remain as comic book-y as ever, complete with onomatopoeia when you down a foe. Helped by some varied locales from the opening break-into an Egyptian museum to places like India, Prague, and Canada, Sly 2 offers up some gorgeous visuals. Character models can be a bit jank by today's standards, Sly has a tendency to make some really goofy faces when he acquires an item via pickpocketing or a story relevant piece of Clockwerk.
Speaking of, the story is superb! Without spoiling much, Sly and the gang go on another world hopping trip, this time to stop a group of criminals from reassembling Clockwerk, after his firey demise in game 1. On that front, the character writing also helps, I laughed a pretty hefty amount, the start of the game even giving me a chuckle! Sly 2 isn't laugh your pants off funny, but the more subtle jokes can get a crackle outta ya.
Structurally, Sly 2's gameplay is a bit more fleshed out. Sly can now pickpocket, which makes for a fun loop of starting an episode, stealing coins and loot off guards, then running back to the hideout and selling it all. Sly's gameplay is significantly improved, and the leap to an open zone vs. a collectathon means you get a healthbar since getting by on a single hit and a few horseshoes ain't gonna cut it here. This applies to your new playable buddies, Bentley and Murray being promoted from gimmick minigames into full on playable characters! Granted, they still have some gimmicky missions, but the fact I can walk around as either Bentley or Murray and get into some hijinks, albeit without pickpocketing, is great fun!
Alas, as alluded to, Sly 2 does have some annoyances. There isn't a back to hideout button, meaning you either load the game back up after finishing a mission or run back to it. That would be nice given some of the levels can be a bit oversized, like episode 3's gigantic jungle, and some objectives require a character swap. Another major grievance is the aforementioned padding. Some missions drag the objective out, like episode 5's bad mojo generator mission. It lead to a few cases of me asking "Why this many?" when I looked and saw the next objective on a different side of the map. But I think where Sly 2 messes up the most are vehicle gimmicks at times being worse than ever. A turret section here, a badly controlling tank there. Sly 2 isn't lacking in variety, but at times, it should've cut down on it.
In all, Band of Thieves is a stellar sequel. I'm happy to have spent 26 hours getting through this one, but that length could've been shortened significantly with less objectives and a few tweaks to mission structure. While nostalgia will point to Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando as being the best of the PS2 platformer sequels, I think Sly 2 rightfully earns the top spot for its story, visuals, characters, and (sometimes) the gameplay.
You're up to bat next, Honor Among Thieves!