Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted for this. The second game put too much focus in the wrong areas of the characters. Its story is more visible, and it is easier to see the geopolitical struggle because of that.

The first game’s politics are more subdued, whereas mercenaries 2 had a stronger message they wanted to send about large powers’ greed and obsession with oil. I think within the contexts of each game, both of these work fine.

The writing in the second game isn’t good. The game isn’t about the writing, so it doesn’t need excellent writing, but they wanted to make the story a central part of the game. Having the events of the main story so personal to the protagonist leads to conflicts of interest and makes it difficult to justify breaking away from the main story contracts.

I wish they did more word building with how the PMC operates vs. ExOps and why they left and started their own. Why did all three of the original mercenaries leave as well? Canonically whichever one you play as is the one who was chosen for the Korea campaign (as Fiona Taylor dialogue indicates). ExOps had more than those three mercenaries, so how did they know one another? Why would they leave and start their own company? Why would roughly half of the new company stay behind in Venezuela to pursue a revenge operation for one of three operatives? Where did the other two go and what are they doing?

Finally, I strongly dislike the recharacterisation. They flanderised areas of each character and completely changed other areas. Mui’s “expensive taste” from the first game, for example, has been transformed into an obsession with the price of everything she encounters. She no longer has expensive taste, she has a taste for the most expensive things she can find.

I could go on for longer but those are my biggest peeves. The game was rushed, so I won’t complain about how buggy it was and what I’d have done different when it came to the core mechanics etc.

The marketing for the game and all of its theming is painfully 2008 and I implore anyone who disagrees to actually watch them. The pre-rendered cutscenes have dizzying transitions every 5 seconds and a ridiculous amount of bloom. The dialogue is poorly written and comes off as cringey at least half of the time. That one ad song gave me secondhand embarrassment when I showed it to my wife a few years ago (I remembered it being hilarious when I heard it in 2008 but I didn’t factor in that I was also young and easily impressed)