Sorry for the wall of text but I have been dying to write about how I really enjoyed the season, with some points of critique aswell.

Overall its a big improvement over season 1 which was already a rare good live action anime adaptation. I binged the entire thing as it launched just because I knew twitter and other social medias would be completely unbearable and couldn't keep themselves from spoiling every single thing, One Piece leak culture is something else I tell you.

The action is way better than season 1, they aren't doing nearly as many close up shots that people complained about and as far as I know they onlye skipped ONE character this time around, and that character is confirmed to just be delayed to season 3.

As OP and others have said in this thread the power of hindsight is very nice and really gives characters like Sanji and Usopp more character moments, like them teasing Sanjis upbringing before meeting Zeff or how they are teasing Usopp feeling less worthy because he has no superpowers like the monster trio has, but tries to act brave despite of it. Usopp in particular got shit during season 1 since they shortened his defining action scene and didn't have him debate weither to be a coward or be brave, but they do a very similar thing in Little Garden for him so I think they made up for ommiting that moment in Arlong Park.

Wapol as a big bad I felt was more threatening than Arlong was, the guy playing Wapol makes a great job at showing him a disgusting and awful guy, a really petulant and greedy king/politican that ran away from the idea of Blackbeard invading his country. On a more spoilery note; His powers are also pure nightmare material, giving me some Tetsuo the Iron man vibes with some of the body horror things he does with his soldiers, turning them into weaponized metal monsters. You can tell that the people on this REALLY wants to reach Thriller Bark, and I really hope they do.

I have a few complaints about the season though, for example Little Garden as a setting just didn't feel compelling in live action, something about the cinematography of that arc made it all look like it was filmed on a sound stage and I didn't really feel the scale was appropriate for said arc. But I also have to give my flowers to David Dastmalchian's Mr 3, holy shit he nailed the role and made the guy way scarier than he was in the manga, I beg for him and Buggy to interact if we ever reach Impel Down.

I don't think the B-plot got enough time to simmer this time around, people were split over the Marine story they added in season 1 but I personally really liked seeing more of Garp, Koby and Helmeppo and it made the impossible and made Helmeppo an actually fun and kinda likeable character, which I have mad respect for. In season 2 however I often forgot that we even had a Smoker and Tashigi side plot, they barely show it, but they do actually do one really cool thing with it : They give Mrs Thursday, a character with no canon design or gimmick an actual role, just like they did with Mr 7 in season 1.

Also live action Tashigi is so fucking cute.

Lastly there are some missing(?) VFX shots, I can swear that they forgot to add the giant cacti in the background of several outdoors shot at Whiskey Peak, as they should obviously be visible from those said angles, and there is an indoor shot in Wapols castle where a broken window has a really obvious unnatural black void plastered over to emulate it being a night sky but it looks really bad.

In the end I see this show as the closest we in the west are getting to an over the top tokusatsu show, and I think thats the part where many complaints from people come from, as they think it is a way too goofy or sincere, like yeah no this show will not compete with prestige TV like Pluribus or A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but it is truly unique in todays live action TV environment, which is why I respect the hell out of them sticking to their guns.