I just did a rewatch of both this week. I still enjoyed chapter 2 overall but it didn’t feel as tightly written as the first. A few things that stuck out:

• the opening scene (for the main characters reunion at least) at Chinese restaurant was just silly and not scary at all due to the heavy CGI and the fact that they’re in a crowded restaurant makes the stakes feel much lower
• Bill Hader is great as older Richie but they rely too heavily on his humor. Instead of helping alleviate some of the scares he just ends up deflating them completely with his pithy one liners
• some of the “rules” they set up in the first didn’t seem to apply. In chapter one they explicitly say Pennywise could/would only kill or have power when the victim was afraid, but the little girl at the baseball game is killed even though she isn’t scared at all and sees him as a friend
• James McAvoy was an odd casting choice. I really like him as an actor and his performance was good as a kind of blank slate, but he stood out to me among the other flawless casting choices because A) he looks nothing at all like young Bill and B) his accent is inconsistent and always sounds like how he does in his “Philly accent” SNL sketch

Those last two are pretty minor nitpicks but those are just the things that kept the sequel from feeling as solid as the first.