The core gameplay remains unchanged from the original Battle Arena Toshinden, but the game does include a simple combo system and an 'Overdrive' gauge.

With this spectacle of the underworld cut short, that would be the last of the latest of the hotly anticipated Battle Arena Toshinden.

Only the participants, and the hosts of the Battle Arena Toshinden, the Secret Society, really knew what happened that day.

Instead of making the Battle Arena Toshinden its tradition of a brutal competition of life or death between assassins and killers, Gaia ruled out the intentional death of all participants, and summoned skilled fighters deemed "those of the everyday world" to fight to show their martial arts skill in the ring.

Now more palpable and lively to its viewers, Gaia would be able to establish the grounds of capital and support by sponsors upon building his team of fighters.

Furthermore, his long time rival and heated enemy, the Secret Society "Divine Four" executive Uranus, lead the arrest against him, having figured out Gaia's mutiny and disclosed his betrayal to Master.

To make the android as strong as possible, its fighting abilities are patterned off the world's greatest fighter, Sho Shinjo.

Unlike the original PlayStation version, it also saves unlocked characters, settings and results, but the introductory movie was removed.

The official soundtrack CD album, consisting of the enhanced tracks, was released by Sony Records on April 21, 1996.

The arrangers were Dota Ando, Yoshiyuki Ito, Naoyuki Horiko, Kiyoshi Yoshikawa, and Hiroshi Iizuka.

In reviews for Battle Arena Toshinden 2, critics generally commented that the game is good but shows little improvement over its predecessor and fails to measure up to marketplace competitors like Virtua Fighter 2 and Tekken 2.

[26] A reviewer for Next Generation similarly said that though Battle Arena Toshinden 2 addresses many of the complaints made about the original game and has impressive light-sourcing effects, backgrounds, and overdrive super moves, it still fails to measure up to Virtua Fighter 2: "The depth of gameplay and complexity of the strategy isn't there, and the speed and smoothness of VF2 far outweighs Toshinden 2's light-sourcing and moving backgrounds.

They reported that among interviewed players, "the general consensus seemed to be that the arcade version IS better, i.e. smoother graphic flow, better gameplay, you know, it just feels better.

He added that compared to smoother 60 frames per second gameplay offered by rivals, Toshinden 2 looked "jerky".

[12] Patrick Baggatta of Game Players felt that the backgrounds were "fantastic" and specified Duke's, Rungo's and Sofia's stages as examples.

Also criticised were "camera problems" and "low-quality background art", both as downgrades compared to the original Toshinden.

Reviewers complained that the game was riddled with a plethora of game breaking glitches, such as computer controlled opponents running and/or falling out of the ring on their own, poor collision detection in some instances and serious character balancing issues, which were so broken that some characters had certain special attacks that provided instant knockouts even with a full life bar (such as performing Kayin's Scottish Moon while both combatants are in the air or Mondo's Goriki Fujin), resulting in some matches lasting mere seconds, while rendering overdrive and desperation moves pointless.

"[27] A reviewer for Next Generation commented, "Any time you can beat the entire game on the hardest difficulty by mashing on one button - with your eyes closed - there's something very wrong.

"[34] GamePro found it very similar to the previous Saturn entry in the series, Battle Arena Toshinden Remix, and concluded, "Simply put, URA is just more of a bad thing."

[44] Lee Nutter noted in Sega Saturn Magazine that the game had been given an unusually high level of PAL optimization, but concluded that the mediocre graphics and lack of depth in the gameplay made it a poor buy, particularly with Fighters Megamix soon to be released in PAL regions.