I played the first game out of pure curiosity, since it was free at the time thanks to my PS Plus subscription. I wasn't a big fan of the metroidvania genre yet, and I had no expectations. Even tho the game didn't blew my mind, I really enjoyed it, for many reasons : its watercolor style, its unique magnet mechanics, the mystery surrounding the story, the great score, and even the bossfights, as painful as they were !
I tried to convince some of my friends to play it, even gifted it to someone, but I felt like not many shared my viewpoint. I discovered later, actually while searching for answers playing the second title, that a lot of people didn't apreciate it as much as I did.
Anyway, when I saw the announcement for the second game, I was very much hyped. It made its way to the top of my wishlist instantly, and I waited for the right time to buy it. Christmas was the best oppurtiny, so I gifted it to myself, and let's say that I was a bit apprehensive at first launch.

I'm not a big fan of the 3D style in this game. It didn't felt as coherent and immersive as Rayman Legends did, for example. I guess I'm too attached to the old style to understand the change, but the animation feels too janky and unpolished to me to be unnoticed.

Then came the technical problems, which is what bothers me the most here. It's always fun to find some bugs that aren't any obstacle to the experience, like the speed boost you get from full hoping + slide. However, it is less fun when it is pretty easy to get out of bounds, and when the game tends to lag every now and then.
But the worst part of my experience was when I got softlocked in the Halvtann fight because the boss glitched and killed both of us at the same time, causing the cracked ice to stay solid and not let me continue the rest of the game. This was a killer for me, I wasn't motivated at all to continue the game after that, but I wanted to be done with it, so I created a new save file, and completed it entirely.
Also, I had difficulties running it on my Steam Deck, so I had to try dfferent versions of Proton to simply open my map, but that's just a minor issue.

Gameplay-wise, I would say that it doesn't quite live up to its expectations :
- The puzzles are okay, but not as thoughtful as the first game.
- The magnetic hood is split into two parts and you only get the red part at the end of the game. That's a questionnable choice of game-design for me, since it is the core of Teslagrad's fun.
- Having the slide and the hammer on the same button makes movement a bit frustrating.
- The physics are too janky to feel satisfying. I was a very big fan of the hood mechanic in the first game, but here it feels like having to fight the game all the way through. However, sliding in this game feels great.
- I didn't like the boss fights, except for Eleanor, which was balanced and made good use of the newly obtained abilities. But the others would feel either too easy (like Halvtann, Fafnir and Huldr) or too difficult (like Galvann because of the axe being hard to aim, and The First Draug which was especially painful to beat)
- The map is too big for what it is used for. It feels like it was thought like a metroidvania map, where you would go back and forth a lot of times (the grapples are reminders of this), but there's not enough upgrades or interesting secrets to justify this size, like Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread would have done. This is particularly visible in the case of the giant room below the first tower, which exists only for a cryptic collectible, whereas it could have been an epic bossfight room.

Story-wise, I find it cool to have the player unravel the story by himself using little illustrations hidden throughout the game. That doesn't mean I understood anything tho lol!
As for the "small viewing stations", I think I preffered the puppet shows of the first game, it was easier to understand while being original.

And personnally, I don't think that its shortness makes it bad, on the contrary.

So yeah, in the end I'd say : neither great nor bad for a game very few asked for.

I'm no journalist, so consider this my honest impression of the game and nothing else, go try it for yourself!