I haven't really invested the time I should have into DOA2 to be honest. I mean, I absolutely loved the first one what with me being 36 years old and having been gaming since the very early 80's so I was brought up on games like that, (Commando, Smash TV, Ikari Warriors, Alien Breed etc) and I love the twin stick genre but I just couldn't get into DOA2 the same way as I did in BO1. Maybe it was the fact that aside from the 1st person power up the game hadn't really changed much. The maps are a little bigger and there is new weapons and stuff but I kinda feel like they could have tried something different retro wise like a side scrolling beat-em-up in the mold of Final Fight/Streets of Rage.
There is a set of mod tools called OpenBOR (Beats of Rage) where it was made with the purpose of allowing people to make custom side scrolling beat-em-ups in the fashion of Streets of Rage. Someone decided to make a Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 side scroller called Crisis Evil (& CE 2).
It would have been nice to see them try a different approach similar to this one or even something different maybe altogether but after playing the first one frequently back in the BO1 days would have loved to have seen something a bit more innovative. The 1st person view mode wore off pretty thin for me. Maybe a full on 1st person view option would have made it more fun but either way there is nothing wrong with the game-mode, it's just not different enough from the first to keep me as entertained anymore unfortunately.