Long post, because I want to keep this thread somewhat alive.
>>14399867
I'm inclined to agree, but I'm hesitant to write off 2, so quickly. 2 isn't DX, and it isn't trying to be. It's "2."
That sounds like a petty argument over semantics, but it's important. The main reason being that as a sequel to the first Championship Edition, it's drawing elements from both 1, and DX/DX+. So you have the ghosts actually moving on their own, like in one, but then you have the chains like in DX.
The ghosts in particular, I wasn't a fan of when I first saw them, but thinking about it more, and having actually played it, it makes sense. If they operated on DX logic, ie "touch one once and you die" it'd be basically unplayable, given how much space the trains take up. It's fine for the entire chain to be lethal in DX, because that game is basically just snake. You can see this in action when they're angry/lethal, where compress back down to a single ghost.
The ghost train mechanic for munching was something I was mixed about, but I quickly began to like. In DX it never really took any skill to actually cash in your huge ghost chain, just turn around and that was it. But here I'm having to actually look where they'll be and cut them off, and in turn I've actually used the brakes numerous times.
The camera zoom in is inexcusable, however, or rather the inability to turn it off, is. That shit interferes with the gameplay. Not as much as I thought it would (see "barely") but it does. And anything that does shouldn't be in there.
There's also the way the bombs work now, sending you back to the beginning, instead of the ghosts. It sounds minor, but when you really get into beating your high score, you find yourself having to plan out when you'll use them, as the points bonus you get is integral to actually topping your old one. Which also leads into having to quickly decide if you should use one on a maze or not, as there's a lot more factors than just missing points at the end.
You skip the current dot maze (if you've activated the fruit) but at the same time the value of the dots resets, and you miss out on gaining another bomb, as well as any minion ghosts in that maze.
So it leads to fast decision making, of like "is the time I'd save, in getting to the fruit, worth it?" And that decision has actually led to some pretty fucking tight margins of beating my previous scores, since the times I've called it correctly, I've snagged a ghost chain at the last second, and the times I've misjudged it, I've missed that last chain.
Also, another thing.
The fact that the ghosts are actually a danger now means the one ups are harder to hang onto, and by proxy, all that more integral to that higher score.
However, despite all of this, I really can't call it "the best" as it is such a radical departure from the other two, to the point where their gameplay loops are so fundamentally different, they're basically different Pac-Man games entirely.
I'll defend that it's "good" in my opinion, and one thing I do think it has is the best presentation. CE2 is a fucking visual treat, leagues more than the other two, and the absolutely stellar music selection this time around really contribute to said presentation.
I'm not sure if I'm having more fun with 2, than DX+, but I guess the fact that I have to think about it at all means it's probably not enough, given how it's billing itself.
TL;DR:
>It's good. The mechanics changes make sense, and each one justifies the other. But it's also so utterly different from the other two, that it's basically a completely different game/interpretation of the concept of "Championship Edition" rather than DX was an iterative sequel to 1.