Technically well made, with all the trimmings and toppings of a blockbuster production done exceedingly well. Ultimately though, I still left this film with the same hollow feeling I had after Part 1. There's just something about this world, these characters and this adaptation that I do not emotionally connect with at all.
There were also some nitpicks that irritated me throughout the film. Some sequences felt like I was watching them in fast forward with how quickly they were breezed through and glossed over. I appreciated the quick pace of the first film, but this one really felt like it overdid it at times. Also slightly annoying is the noticeable PG-13-ness of it all, in particular, a lack of blood in the sword fights. One of the villains of the film is literally introduced by testing out the sharpness of his knives on slaves and then gladiatorial battle, and the absence of any blood splatter at all during these scenes was so jarring that I started to notice it more and more throughout the rest of the fights in the movie.
Overall, I cannot say for certain if I like this one more than the first film or not, so I am giving it the same overall score. I think I will have to revisit both films back to back at some point, to view them as a complete package and see if my opinion changes on it or not.