Props to how rewarding this game is

[Oku]

Seems like every facet of the game is meant to encourage people to just keep playing and not give a ♥♥♥♥ if they win or lose. The sheer volume of character and profile cosmetics you can unlock through character leveling combined with most ranks not letting you derank out of them seems like the game wants you to just play and keep playing where losses only start mattering once you are in a high enough skill bracket that you know what you're doing. I have a lot of friends who want to get in to fighting games but have felt like so many of them just beat down on you for losing that they get discouraged and quit. I think this one is going to be my go-to for anybody looking to get in to the genre.

Major props

[Fish]

True for online play. My only criticism is that you can hardly earn anything at all playing the single player content.
You can go through the arcade mode once and not gain a single character level, and difficulty doesn't seem to impact exp gain there either. You earn like roughly 10 exp per fight in arcade or something like that.

That and, Grand Bruise's exp gain rate is just way too low imo. You need like 500+ games to get to the fish lobby avatar. (understandably this is to encourage people to keep running Grand Bruise, but at the moment this is an extremely painful process to go through)

It's very clear that every focus went to online modes, which are in fact fantastic. However, I do think we lost some of the appeal that the first game had, which had a really solid amount of content for users who only wanted to play single player.

[PewPew]

Ye give your life in exchange to keeping the game alive (literally). Since you only get the big boosts to points if you play in casual,ranked or lobbies. If you make a private lobby or join you lose the bonus and you realize what they are really after.

You are the product but it's okay you enjoy it. And once you hit 300 on one character I dont think you get anything anymore till 500. So either you switch, or you keep going without seeing any rewards.

[Fish]

Oh yeah, that reminded me. Private rooms also give very little exp as well. (Though you can somewhat sidestep this issue by just arranging a meet up place with a friend in the lobby)

Although, on the flip side, the amount of unlockables in this game is quite impressive. That much is true.
In the original, you run out of things you can purchase with your earned currency really quickly. Rising at least will keep you busy for much longer and it's structured in a way to encourage playing multiple characters.

Credits where credits are due, I do think this game has better unlockables. Just that, the rate of progression probably needs some balancing across different modes.