Thing is, as a couple of people have pointed out, "kinda fun" was not good enough for the sequel to Blood.
I agree it is not as horrondous as legend had it, but it was a BIG dissapointment.
And I don't know if it was the programming of the Game AI or the very buggy early LithTech engine,but the enemy in Blood 2 came off as Dirt Dumb.

This is the most offended I have ever seen anyone get over a Blood 2 jab.

Agreed. I played Blood 2 "in the day" and I honestly don't remember much about it... it just wasn't memorable. I found a list of games I'd played over the years, and for Blood 2 I wrote a one-word review: "BORING".
People's opinions are relative to their own experiences. Had I not played Blood first, or if Blood 2 was one of the first games I'd ever played, I would surely have thought more highly of it. Surely...?

Lol nah I could care less about the Blood 2 jab, I just cant stand their smug attitudes, and theyve only gotten worse over the years. The strip was actually quasi funny circa 10 years ago, now it just feels like they are stroking their egos. Maybe the Blood 2 jab did piss me off just a little bit lol.

welcome to the gog forums

First off Blood 2 got rid of everything that made Blood interesting and replaced it with something boring
replace anachronistic 1920s gothic horror-comedy setting with modern alleyways office buildings and, of course, sewers
replace fun enemies with a bunch of generic henchmen who say the same four lines over and over
replace crazy weapon arsenal with berettas and m16s
then you've got the level design, which is like a bizarre mashup of old school and post-half life without the charm or architectural sense of either... turning the game into a linear slog through wave after wave of bad guys with the odd jumping or switch pulling puzzle to fill in the gaps like spackle
throw in a bunch of cutscenes and character development even though nobody gives a crap
then litter the whole thing with a ton of bugs

Well, you still have the flare gun and the voodoo doll. Then there's the singularity generator, the flayer in the add-on, and I'm pretty certain there was a laser rifle as well. Might be more that I'm forgetting. It wasn't as good as the first one, but I still have fond memories of it, though that might be because I actually played it first.

What I remember most are those enemies that act just like the hands form Blood 1 (except instead of hands they're worms because they wanted to be less interesting) except its impossible to get them to let go no matter how much you mash space because they just jump back on immediately.

That Penny Arcade strip is like a zillion years old.
Let me provide you with some perspective "of the time". IIRC, I bought Shogo MAD about a week before I played Half-Life for the first time. I never finished Shogo after that.
Lithtech wasn't a bad engine by any standards. But were so close to a game that would so completely redefine the genre that suddenly it looked so much worse.

I believe they hated it for all the reasons listed. To be honest, the original Blood played so well and had so much atmosphere that I think the only way it could have been done justice was by an honest to god Half-Life-esque sequel, using that game's engine. The futuristic setting could have been workable, and not all the levels were designed poorly. But as OP said, the charm was all gone. I would hate to see a new Blood game today. They would either make it far too dark or they would make it all flash and no substance.

I never understood why Blood 2 turned out the way it did-it WAS the same company/dev team,right? To me,it was like they completely ignored all the fun/interesting stuff in the first game and churned out a pseudo-Quake FPS with a few good bits. But the same danged company also produced the NOLF games,AvP2 and FEAR/FEAR2....

I finished Shogo three times or more, I only ever got through Half-Life once. To me, the basic gameplay and various guns are simply much more fun in Shogo.

The biggest mistake was placing Blood II in 2028, complete with pseudo-futuristic levels. The old-school, dark, gritty, and gothic feel that Blood I had was a big part of making the game what it was. Blood II lacks all that.
It's a decent FPS - certainly not a game to outright hate - but doesn't hold a candle to it's predecessor.

Your mileage may vary, but Half-Life is a difficult game to measure the importance of, because so many of the features that made it stand out from the crowd back then are just "how things are done in first person shooters these days".
Everything about it at the time was just sublime though. Present day (now past) black ops setting, unusually restrained protagonist, cleverly AI'd military soldiers (I still remember the first time one lobbed a grenade at me to flush me out of cover), and a wide variety of weapons from the beautifully mundane (crowbar) to the enjoyably ridiculous (snarks, hornetgun, laser gun thingy).
Shogo stood out to me at the time only because it was the closest thing I'd ever seen to an manga-styled game, and IIRC, it would soon be displaced by Bungie's "Oni".
Ooh, Oni. BRB, Gotta go vote for that on the list of games I'd love to see on GoG :)

Having agreed with all th negativges about Blood 2...I particularly agree that the futuristic setting was a huge mistake,...I woud say it' overall had enough entertaiment value to be worth Six Bucks now that it is on GOG.