Awesome Music: The game's soundtrack is composed by a former ZUNTATA composer after all.
Broken Base: The art change in Senko no Ronde 2 has fans torn in three ways: swearing off buying the game, disliking it but still planning on getting the game (and fearing the backlash), and a few like it. It ends after the story mode from DUO has been ported wholesale, complete with the original character design.
Fan Nickname: Because the otherFinal Boss of the first game has no officially given name, fans refer to its first form as either "Squid" due to its squid-like appearance or "NoName". The latter could also be applied to its Rounder-like second form.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Senko no Ronde was often dubbed as "Virtual-ON in 2D" by fans of these games. Fast-forward to late 2017, G.rev revealed on an issue of Famitsu a crossover DLC featuring Temjin from Sega's Virtual-ON as a playable character (along with the titular Assault Suit from NCS's Assault Suits Valken) and finally release on November 2017.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: A common complaint about the first Senko no Ronde on the Xbox 360 was how the Story Mode was presented. In order for players to get to certain branching paths, they must listen in on or ignore certain dialogue or allow the opponent to go B.O.S.S. mode and survive. What makes this egregious is that players must draw the battle out as long as possible for the characters to interact, which also means taking your attention off your opponent to read the subtitles of what they're saying while they pull no punches of their own, leading to players to ignore most of the story. Furthermore, narrative isn't built at all during the Story Mode and trusts you into a battle with little context of why you're fighting the opponent the game pits you against, yet the game's in-game encyclopedia can fill you in on what's happening after the fact. The sequel addressed this with dialogue that properly takes place before and after matches with its Story Mode.
Spiritual Adaptation: Senko no Ronde is possibly the closest thing to a Toward the Terra game that nobody has never played. Alternatively, it's Virtual-ONIN TWO DIMENSIONS!
That One Achievement: All of the online-specific Achievements in the first game's Xbox 360 port. How is this a problem, you may ask. There's little-to-no players playing online matches anymore, that's how! And don't get us started with the 1,000 ranked matches Achievement...
They Panned It, Now They Suck: Every major video game critic in the U.S. stem from this, given that some of the reviewers may not be even fans of the shoot 'em up genre to begin with.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A few points of contention rose with Senko no Ronde 2, especially for those that were able to play the original Senko no Ronde DUO.
The aforementioned artstyle changed for the characters which put off some players and fans of the original artists' artstyle (the character art were previously handled Shuji Sogabe and Mizuki Takayama from the first game and in DUO). Although the original character art from DUO can be seen in the Story Mode since it was ported from Xbox 360 version, many wish they could have the original artists back for the rest of the game.
Removing the ability to select your support character and having prefixed them per character in 2, which many argued that it limits the match-up potential that DUO originally had. This was thankfully remedied with the Virtual-ON & Assault Suit Valken DLC update which brought back the ability to select any support character.
