One of the best games on the Playstation, and a great platform game in it's own right. The classic formula still stands the test of time and I had a blast playing through it. I only had experience with Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped and while that game has a ton of new features, I found Crash 2 to be more imaginative and creative. The obstacles were more clever, and the paths more interesting. It could be just that I've played Crash 3 to death... Anyway, one thing's for sure, the boss battles are terribly easy, it'll require only a few attempts if anything. The N Gin boss fight felt a bit primitive considering how clunky it felt and looked when Crash shot those wumpa fruits. The many animations of Crash were a nice touch, from how he looks behind him in fear when a huge bear's chasing him, the winks and smile when he's about to jump onto a smaller bear (to ride on) or his sighing when you leave him alone like he's sick of you making him die so many times. I've seen reviews where they said the settings were limited (I think around nine distinct environments) but I didn't think that was too much of a problem, still a lot of variety here. The enemies were interesting, and I loved how some enemies can only be defeated using a specific attack (spin, slide or jump).
The music was great but yeah, that was a little repetitive, but it suited the game so well that I can hardly fault it. The controls were smooth but some of the platforming aspects were annoying, in some areas where you had the view of viewing behind Crash, and were jumping on small platforms, it's easy (especially in the first few times) to misjudge the distance and fall to your death. The graphics were great, considering it's age and the hardware limitations of the time, very pleasing to the eye and hardly any rough edges. The collecting aspect was done well, with a few optional collectibles that is actually pretty challenging. There's some pretty unexpected and interesting ways to get these collectibles. Then there's the secret levels, areas and boxes, whoa, they're hidden really well, which makes it that much more fun to rat them out. The story is weak, it's here only as an excuse to string the levels together. The words can be hard to hear too, making the characters hard to understand (most of the story is only comprised of short speeches from holographic characters...). This is a great game providing a lot of challenge, yet it's easy enough to have a lot of fun with.
-----------------------------
Other game reviews can be found on this page.