so ive been playing the enduro mode and god it gets really fucking fast when you play the game for so long. i have no idea if im gonna be able to complete the whole set of 66 levels (i certianly can't do it in one sitting - i have had to cheat a little and use save states) but its very fun to try
lumines 2 is an alright but odd sequel with some weird jank. it has weird issues keeping in sync with a lot of the licensed tracks - it features tracks with half-tempos like bottle rocket and heavenly star that throw the scan line off, some tracks aren't synced because the background music video doesn't play the song for a while and then it starts playing in the middle of the grid, like in pump it and hollaback girl, and then there's lose control which just has a BPM change at the end that throws absolutely everything off and i always have to try and play fast enough to skip it.
it also removes a lot of the charm of the original game, which would change the UI with each skin and had smoother level transitioning - this one has a static ui with videos playing in the background, that black out for the transition, because i guess that was easier to produce.
so what do i like about it? its larger and more challenging. 66 main levels spread into 3 classes - with each class gradually making your playfield smaller so you have much less room to mess up. a lot of the new original songs are great too - they got a lot of artists in to make songs for this game and its a shame most of them have not been released, remaining stuck on a tiny little UMD.
it also has most of the songs from the original game (aside from the four licensed tracks - sorry, no shinin', but you get heavenly star which is definitely fair compensation), a sleek menu design reminiscent of the ipod nano / touch era, a goofy little sequencer for making some basic tracks, and of course its still lumines with the nice satisfying lumines gameplay of block matching and synestheia.
overall i would still reccommend the first game / remastered version over this but if you've played those and want to try something different... uh, play lumines: electronic symphony. and then this, i guess.