First, let me preface this by saying, I AM the biggest Rallisport 1 fan in the universe. It’s not even debatable. I’ve played countless hours of it. With that said, my word is GOSPEL when it comes to Rallisport 2.
Ok, on to the fun.

In writing this review, I want to start with how the game feels, particularly in comparison to Rallisport Challenge 1 (hence forth to be known as RSC1 and RSC2 respectfully). Obviously, like the first, the game is fast as hell, and a bit on the arcade side. DICE has revamped both the controls and physics (as well as some small details that can have an effect on car handling, more on that later) quite a bit, though admittedly, if you haven’t played much of RSC1, you may not notice a whole hellava lot different. It still "feels" like rsc1 (thankfully!).

Cars seem to behave a bit more realistically taking corners. It’s now no longer (absolutely) necessary to brake or let off the gas while cornering to "power slide" (of course this varies depending on track surface). Cars also react much more realistically and better to bumps, jumps and collisions. Gone are the days of the stupid, endless twirl through known space when you hit the slightest pebble or corner of a fence. The way your car interacts with these trackside objects is also of note. There are MANY more trackside objects that can be knocked around and smashed up, and many of the "indestructible" parts of a stage are animated in such a way that makes them appear more real. Trees will shutter when hit, and leaves may fall. Of course, hitting these objects will also wreck havoc on your poor car. This game has without a doubt the best damage system I’ve seen. Yes, better then CMR/TOCA2. On the easy difficulties, the damage is aesthetic. The harder the difficulty however, the larger the effect on your cars performance. It is entirely possible that after a few misjudged corners on this difficulty, you could lose a tire, and effectively take yourself out of the competition. No matter how banged up your car gets, it will always be drivable though. But cruising at 2-30 mph, constantly dropping gears and being nearly unable to steer, you may not want to finish.

Probably the biggest advance the game has made since RSC1 is the way the single player progression works. RSC1 had a shallow single player experience. It was straight forward, linear, and ultimately quite short. RSC 2 however, is proving to be MUCH longer, and has all sorts of non-lineality (is that a word?) to it. Each difficulty has its own unique set of a branching progression system. The player often gets to choose (from often as many as 4 different paths) what event he’d like to race in next. You don’t like ice racing? Its possible to go through the whole game and hardly touch the sport. And to top it off, the higher the difficulty setting (there’s four of them) the more events and branches there are! Of course, in order to unlock all the games unlockables (an astounding 230+), you’ll eventually want to go back and fill in the event paths you skipped. The events themselves are built up from 2-5 races (generally), and in response to feedback from the first game, you can restart each individual race to perfection if you screw up badly (however, no restarts in “super rally, the game’s hardest difficulty path).
And on the topic of events and stages, they are gorgeous. Without even touching the graphical aspects (which we all know, they are incredible), they are expertly crafted and created. They are long (up to 12 miles!), varied and incredibly detailed. On one stage, you may find yourself starting in a seaside town, cruising by the ocean, then winding your way up through the foothills into a full on hill climb setting. You’ll wrap all the way around exposed mountain roads before finally tearing full speed down back towards that starting city on an entirely different path. Towards the start of the game, the stages are quite easy and simple, but the game has a nice progression of track difficulty. It wont be too long till your screaming through narrow winding roads, tearing through pine forests (which just happen to drop visibility around corners to zero feet), at night, in fog.