3.5/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

Wow, this game improved upon the first a ton. While it's still not one I'd readily revisit, it's infinitely more playable just due to the addition of the manual. Having the manual makes stringing together a combo much, much, much easier and, in effect, makes the game a lot easier to handle. I didn't have nearly as many points where I got just straight up stuck trying to reach a point goal. In fact, while still challenging (in fact enough to the point where I will probably still have to take an extended break before returning to this one), I wouldn't mind coming back to this game to play it again at some point in the future. This game also introduces the Create-A-Park and Create-A-Skater features. While I didn't mess around in this game's Create-A-Park mode that much, I can tell from playing future versions of it that it must have been amazing for kids to mess around with when this originally released. Create-A-Skater is also a pretty neat addition, even if the options for customization, appearance-wise, are pretty limited (moveset-wise though, holy crap you can customize like, everything). Having *your* character go through the game, increase stats, and gold medal (which is infinitely easier to do in this game) all three competitions, feels much better than just playing as a Pro Skater (even if that is still pretty cool). Aside from right analog control and reverts, this feels a lot more like the renaissance Tony Hawk games than the first, and that's a good thing. It's getting closer and closer to what I consider the pinnacle of Tony Hawk games. Can't wait to see how Pro Skater 3 fairs on the PS2!