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Rogue Legacy 2 has more of everything than the original Rogue Legacy.
That's usually, but not always, a good thing.
The core moment to moment gameplay is better and very satisfying, with more emphasis on platforming in some areas and more combat options and more movement options. Every class restores mana on hitting an enemy so every class can use magic throughout, and class abilities (talents) have their own variable cooldowns. Each class also has its own unique weapon with some variations possible, and a unique ability to the class. The weapon, spell and talent can be changed in specific rooms in the castle, so even a class with a weapon you don't like (Ronin with the slow Katana, for instance) can be turned into one you do (finding the Greatsword). There's a lot of incentive to switch between the 15 classes (Valkyrie is my favorite!) and do well with as many classes as you can, and most are at least good - the mix is much better than the original!
However, the overall gameplay loop is hindered by the fact that there's more of it. The castle has 6 areas compared to 4 in the original, and to see all the content Rogue Legacy 2 has to offer, you have to beat NG+6. The original had nothing new beyond NG+2, and both games only scale stats past this point. There's a slow drip of new boss and challenge unlocks, and new lore and dialogue on each of NG+1 through NG+7, compared to the original where I believe you can see everything in the first NG. Rogue Legacy 2 is designed for the grind.
And yes, that means there's more grind. The original caps out at 523 upgrades. I beat NG+7 at 760 upgrades, and this was far from maxed out. This is actually a good thing - the game is designed to let you keep scaling, your equipment keep scaling, and the enemies keep scaling, should you want to progress to NG+20, or 50, or 100. At about 2-2.5 hours for each clear of NG+5 through NG+7, I don't have the interest in dumping several hundred hours to make numbers get bigger when relatively, I still take 2-4 hits to defeat most enemies and still die in 6-11 without healing. It would just be more playing for the sake of more playing, and after 60 hours I'd had enough. It took me another 20 to complete everything meaningful.
So what meaningful content am I talking about? Well, the characters have more personality, which is great! Between runs they can give you little bits of dialogue to add depth, and there's more of them. The docks are a nice place and fairly charming... but you spend barely any time there. Instead of 25 diary entries - of which 2 are given for free - each area has 6 to 9 diary entries or memories to access, at most one per area per character. These add a lot of depth to why the events of the game are happening and this is one place where the "more" is a great benefit. If only the endgame lore came faster...
Each area has its own challenging boss. These are all well designed fights except one, and I'm willing to believe I just never hit on the right method. On each new game plus, you can choose to upgrade each boss in sequence to their prime version, making them even harder. These are also great challenges except for two. Defeating the prime versions unlocks their last memories, which are genuinely some of the best backstory in the game. About half of the information was inferrable, but in context it's always much more interesting in how everything fits together. Each boss and prime boss also unlock a scar - a specific challenge similar to the boss remixes of the original. There are 16 (really more like 15) of these, compared to 5 boss remixes in the original. These are often extremely difficult to complete and unfortunately sometimes unfair. Throwing 2 bosses in the same arena only works when you always have an out. When the only dodge is to go over, and the other boss is blocking over, you're getting hit and that's no fun. 5 of these are time challenges with a specific class to destroy targets in a specific environment, and getting gold on these requires mastering the class and the route. Ultimately, this is a good place for there to be more: though getting gold on combat scars is more of a grind than it needs to be, requiring a win with at minimum 5 different classes. And probably more like 7 or 8 in practice.
Overall, there's a lot more to like about Rogue Legacy 2. Just be prepared to have to play a lot more of it than you might want to, in order to get everything you want out of it. I don't regret my time spent with the game, but unlike the original I don't think I'll have a desire to return to it.