While waiting for the game to ship (I had a friend buy it for me from Newegg), I replayed Sin and Punishment 1 about two weeks ago. It made me realize that the original game simply isn't that great. There is like one fantastic stage - the carrier fleet fly-over. And while there were many great bosses, the overall game is pretty disjointed with lots of poor mash-up of various action elements (the side scrolling stage sucked, shooting the super missile down was retarded, etc). The game also has control issues, because they really pushed the N64 controller to the max in terms of inputs and what the player has to pay attention to.
Right from the start Sin and Punishment 2 seems like a HUGE improvement. They take the elements which worked in S&P and reworked them really well to the Wii environment. Better environments, more interesting scrolling, a great tutorial stage, and really good controls. The challenge feels pretty good too. I'm still not completely used to the point + nunchuck controls in terms of posture and comfort, but it's starting to work out and the game is really engaging.
I swapped the melee attack button to tap A instead of tap B, because I felt that would be more natural for me, but I'm starting to discover that with Lock-on being A as well, I lose the lock-on when I use the sword. Would it be better if I swapped it back to B (I really feel less comfortable with this), or should I change Lock-on to B instead? This way, I only lose the lock-on if I stop firing and tap it again, but not if I'm holding fire and I press A to deflect a missile. Thoughts on this?