izigame.me

Disclosure. I bought this game as part of a bundle, and at a large discount. My thinking was, even if I hated the games, it would just be a few dollars (on average) per game -- and if one of the games in the bundle was good, then the rest would just be gravy. This game was definitely part of an impulse purchase. Lego Batman 2 is the second game in the series. It is similar to the first game (which I really liked), and adds an open world, which seems to be the main reason everyone prefers this game.
Regarding the open world feature, I don't know how I completely feel about it -- as there are so many concerns that I have mixed feelings about it. In fact, I will likely spent most of this review on this. If you don't care about it, feel free to skip the next few paragraphs. For now, I recommend ignoring the open world feature until much later in the game -- on the map, you just need to get to the next story location, which is indicated by a bat icon. To get there, just drive over using the path markers provided. Ignore everything else on the drive over.
To start, the open world doesn't seem to be needed at all. The way the first Lego Batman allowed you to navigate the world was just fine, and much easier to understand. I agree that having an open world allows you to explore, but there isn't any reason to do so (at least, in the beginning). In the early game, you can see stuff on the open world, but not on the map. Some of the stuff may be puzzle related, but there isn't a way to know if you can solve it yet. Also, you don't have a large set of characters yet -- so, waiting until you have more is better as you are going to need their abilities.
The individual chapters are much longer (and somewhat connected) than the previous game. The game will autosave after each chapter, or you can save at a checkpoint. If you exit the game after finishing the chapter, returning will sometimes start the next chapter (avoiding the open world entirely). If you exit the game after a checkpoint, returning will place you on the world, and you will have to travel the open world again, in order to return to the checkpoint. This means that the open world is either not used, or adds an annoying step, upon restart. In other words, playing the main story would work better without the open world.
Finally, the map doesn't seem to have an indication of what the icons mean, and what to do -- having a better legend would be a good idea here. Also, the map is not complete. To get more detail on the map, you will need to activate remote terminals in each area. Some of these terminals will require characters like Superman and the Flash. My recommendation, when you are done with the story, is to take Superman to search for these remote terminals -- ones that haven't been activated will show up as red spotlights. Once you activated the complete map, and do a couple of tasks, you can kinda figure out what the icons mean.
The puzzles are like the previous game, but a little more obscure (and for some of them, not in a good way). In my opinion, the issue may be that some actions (and interactions with objects) are not intuitive enough. In one case, I was stuck for quite some time, doing lots of trail and error, until I gave up in frustration. I eventually returned to try again, more than a week later. Also, there seems to be a bug where some things don't work sometimes, as there were cases where I did something, that I could have sworn that I already tried and failed previously. Regardless, the rest is like the first game -- there are lots of places where you have to destroy stuff, in order to get all the pieces, in order to build stuff. Many of the issues with the previous game seems to also apply here. The solution can get very specific, and sometimes, when you finally get to the solution, you may be more annoyed than satisfied.
Also, I feel that I need to speak about the characters. This game added many characters from the Justice League. This is really cool. In my opinion, this may arguably be the best DC superhero video game that I have played. Unfortunately, the Batman Rogues Gallery suffers from this. I really liked playing as the villains in the first game, so, was kinda disappointed that they were not included as playable in the main story here.
Overall, I would still recommend this game, as it is just like the first game (if you ignore the open world feature). I also liked the open world feature (for a short while anyway). Once you finished the story, and activate all the remote terminals, it is a cool way to get some extra end game content. Interestingly, my opinion is definitely different than most reviewers, as the majority of them liked this game over the first game. I really liked the first game better.