I freakin' love what they're doing with the characters so far.
I had grown so attached to the original DR cast, that I was unsure of how I would approach this new cast, but it's genius what they've done. They kind of play on your expectations based on the previous cast, particularly with two characters: Byakuya and Nagito.
I freakin' HATED Byakuya in the first game. Even when he had his one redeeming moment, I continued to hate him. What a jerk. Then here in DR2, THIS Byakuya is awesome. Being responsible and acting as a great leader. Also, he's fat, so that's cool? Too bad he had to die so early, but I was kind of expecting it, otherwise the group would be on Easy Mode, having such a great leader.
Now Nagito. I'm sure many of you notice the "Makoto Naegi" anagram within his name, not to mention he looks and sounds similar to Makoto (I'm not going to look up and compare voice actors, as that kinda stuff spoiled parts of the first game for me). All the "hope" talk also has the player draw parallels towards the previous main character of Danganronpa.
However, his turn during the trial, turning him into a psychopath with Junko-levels of obsession for "hope" was brilliant. I'm really hoping that Nagito really is Makoto, and his time in the world after escaping Hope's Peak has morphed him some really horrible ways, breaking down his character and warping him into this monster we see right now. As someone who hated Makoto in the previous game, I'm gonna love him if this turns out to be the case.
The game plays so much on your expectations from the first game, that I can't imagine the experience for someone who hasn't played the original.
Unfortunately, one area the game did not break my expectations in was the gameplay. The trial mini-games are as stupid as ever. It honestly has to be a joke that the new word puzzle game is called "IMPROVED Hang Man's Gambit," because it seems to be way worse than before, and it was already pretty bad. It's funny that "Bullet Time Battle" has been renamed and they acknowledge the dumb name, but it's not funny that it still suuuucks. I really wish they had just stuck to the logic puzzles and left out the arbitrary "action" mini-games.
And one part of first trial that I found really silly was how THE LAMP is how Nagito found his way to the table. I mean, he's standing right in front of the table, a few steps away, and Miharu's diagram makes that very clear. All he would have to do is turn around and walk slowly towards it! I randomly just picked the lamp because I had no idea what else it could've been that lead him to the table.