A step up from the Rugby League and certaily well worth the wait with the delayed release.
The makers of this game have certainly turned many of the things around with this game improving 10 fold in some areas and only marginally in others.
Game play, this has introduced a new and very nice feature of the franchise, where yu pick a club and you must take it through the highs and lows of many seasons and certainly finding new talent as your regulars sustain injuries. But this this is a new addition to this version, it requires some tweaks and certainly a look at the popular american sports games from EA for the best way to play with this mode. But when you get on the field things haven't changed a lot. The levels of play from rookie to legend haven't gone under a vast change, since you are either thrashing the teams or getting trashed, there is no missle ground I found. But with easier to use controls and the addition to more in game movements such as divnig on the ball and cut out passes it certainly makes the game more enjoyable to play.
A training schedule has been included but it isn't what I was expecting, the inclusion of actual training with the inclusion of coming up with set plays to train with, to try and outwit the oppoents as they do the same. This would be a great model t include with the possiblity of having a managment mode where as the coach you sit and watch the game on the weekend but during the week you make sure you understand the game coming up and the players and try to come up with a winning game plan.
The graphics aren't the best I have seen on the playstation 2, but they hold up well the world of sports games. The player models are vastly superior to the first game and you can now see the players and know exactly who you are looking. But a suggested feature for anothe future version would be to go one step further than likenesses but trying to include the players animations as well, so when you are playing the likes of Darren Lockyer and Andrew Johns you are able to perform the many tasks that these players can perform on the field with no effort what so ever. But with next gen consoles being developed for there would be more than enough grunt for this, but certainly the EA games have been using this style of player likeness for some time now.
Sound is good. Good crowd effects and the sound of the hits are well demonstrated. But this is an area that does seem very static, the crowd should be dynamic, the cheer of the home crowd and the geering of the away team as you run out onto the field.
Overall this is a great improvement over the previous version, and certainly the game is far more playable as well. Improvements in the graphics and gameplay and the features it makes it a must game for the gaming rugby league fan. But it is certainly encouraging to see what the makes did with the second version and I am very optimistic on the 3rd which they should look at.