Spiderman 2 definitely has its pros and cons.
The gameplay and traversal is spectacular. Traversal especially. Try going back to spiderman 1 after spiderman2, everything feels so slow. It's like there was a puzzle missing and they filled it. Same with combat, in the first game, suit abilities were either useless or overpowered. I don't think I ever changed my suit ability from the first one, it was that overpowered. Switching to abilities made the combat far more dynamic. Plus, you no longer have one ability so op, that you never switch things up. There is also a car more natural progression in spiderman 2 with most of the powerful abilities unlocking at the end.
They also ixed my biggest complaint regarding combat in the previous games. In the previous games, after a certain point, it used to become hard to identify enemy types during combat. Spiderman 2 fixed that. Enemy types are more numberous and are far more clearly distinguishable.
They also reduced the feeling of repetition besides maybe one side activity. The science tasks are generally different from each other( The lab missions). The outposts are smaller in general and are far fewer in quantity. Crimes are now entirely optional. They tried adding atleast some uniqueness to each task and overall reduced the quantity.
The story also, was good at the start. The voice acting is good, same with direction and pacing. It's just that the story starts falling apart from the mid point. Having two spidermans didn't help the game at all. Having to juggle two main characters clearly impacted the game. Peter is trying to balance his life, his aunt is dead, he has lost his job, he is trying to improve his relationship with MJ, his best friend is back and trying to launch a new startup together and then is dying again, and his former enemies are dropping like flies due to a powerful new enemy all the while he is dealing with the synboite. In comparison, miles is trying to complete an essay and chasing martin li. Miles just didn't have the hock needed for the story. The main events felt disconnected from him. That's why we also ran into the issue wherein they had to give missions clearly meant for Peter to miles, the black cat mission being a clear example.
Also the later part of the story was definitely rushed, which made things worse. Peter losing sumboite, venom taking over harry and taking over new york happened too quickly. The later parts should have been left for part 3. You spend 70 to 80% of the game dealing with kraven( if you are being generous, it felt like kraven was 90% of the game). Dedicating only 20 to 30% of the game to a villain as integral and famous as venom was a poor choice.
Finally the problem with the story was the dialogues. It felt like the dialogues were written by CW writers. They felt safe and sanitized, like someone passed them through a filter to remove anything even remotely offensive. Characters felt safe and bland inspite of the excellent voice acting. It also resulted in some characters feeling too one dimensional. Compare J Jonah Jameson in spiderman 1 vs spiderman 2, if you are looking for an example.
Spiderman 2 unfortunately follows the footsteps of recent Sony sequels having better gameplay( and side activies) but worse story lines.