The game has 4-player wireless play,[2] supports the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak accessory, and was released in Japan on May 17, 2007.

Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii is the same as that found in the original game, although it has been turned ninety degrees and is now rendered using 3D graphics.

The gameplay plays out identically to that found in the first Ouendan; the player must tap colored circles in precise time with the music in order to cheer the character through his or her problems.

If the player's cheering is good, then the meter at the top of the touch screen stays in the yellow, and the character is seen triumphing over whatever it is holding him or her back.

Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii contains multiple enhancements over the original game, many of which were first featured in Elite Beat Agents.

Unlike the first Ouendan game and Agents, the beatmaps of most missions (as opposed to few or none) on expert difficulty, which are usually mirrored beatmaps of the hard difficulty, have slightly different beat patterns or extra markers, causing expert mode to have a higher (or in some cases, lower) max combo count than that of hard mode.

It is also possible to unlock a mode in which the game's timer circles/markers are disabled, forcing the player to hit the markers with only the rhythm of the music as a guide.

Likewise, the player is allowed to use a Cheer Girl on the easier difficulties, retaining the female moves, but the dances correspond to the male markers.

It consists of skins of the Elite Beat Agents and Elite Beat Divas for the 3-D models of dancing Ouendan on the touch screen, as well as two new multiplayer characters, Agent J and the Ramen Shop Cat in the first Ouendan game,[5] the former which is used in the campaign and is toggled on or off when selecting its difficulty level.

In the campaign's penultimate mission, the Agents skins are only applied on the Yuuhi Town Ouendan for the first phase, then when the Asahi Town Ouendan take over for the remaining two phases, the leader is replaced by the Ramen Shop Cat, who sports their hairstyle while their backup dancers remain unchanged.

In keeping the "wall of fire" visual effect that occurs during long combos while the character skins are used, Ouendan 2 finally grants players the experience of seeing Agents characters perform in front of a wall of fire, a feature that was otherwise omitted from the final release of Agents after being present in its earlier E3 demo builds.

In the order in which they are unlocked, they are: While at Game Developer Conference 2007 in San Francisco, Keiichi Yano, creator of the original Ouendan and Agents, stated that iNiS wanted a sequel to Ouendan to respond to various issues that players have discussed online about the former, while also deciding to add the option to hide the timer circles to offer a new challenge to hardcore, veteran players.

Despite Nintendo's penchant for censorship, the developers were also surprised to see the publisher allowing the beginning of a particular level on expert difficulty to show lead Cheergirl Sayaka Ameimiya skinny-dipping in hot springs, with the gap between the two DS screens obstructing her chest.

The leaders of the Kakan ni Ōen difficulty, Ryuuta Ippongi and Hayato Saoniji, appear as a single trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, released the following year.