2 was pretty good, certainly a massive improvement over 1. 1 is a frustrating game though; it reads all of your input and forces you to stick to it. For instance pressing square, square, square, triangle very quickly will force you into a rigid 4-hit attack pattern (which if it should miss leaves you massively vulnerable). The buffer for input is way too lenient making the game inadvertently really hard. 2 was a lot better in that the buffer leniency was correct (a bit closer to the way it was in 3) and many moves you only got near the end of the first game were available from the start. Those who are used to being able to change direction whilst attacking in Y3 will be shocked to find that you had to earn that ability in the first game.