Well, from playing the demo, I can tell you that Hokuto 2 does address a lot of the major complaints you guys had about the first game, namely the sluggish controls and overall slowness of the game. However, they took out jumping for some insane reason, so I don't know...even I'm a bit baffled by that decision.
I guess the appeal of Musou, for me at least, is the "one man army" aspect of it. I like mowing down hundreds of nameless enemy mooks with impressive looking special moves and shit. It's not DMC or Bayonetta, but it serves a specific purpose and does it well enough. And there's the whole leveling aspect, as well. Working towards making your favorite character ridiculously powerful so you can do what you've been doing for the past 100 hours faster and faster. :lol It's shallow as hell, yes, but sometimes it's good to take a break from Dark Souls or Vanquish and play something a bit more mindless. And really, saying it's mindless isn't exactly true, since there's a lot of hidden depth to the games (just look at any Koei-specific forum and see some of the combat strategies/combos some people come up with...some of that stuff is too much even for me).
But yeah, I ain't tryin' to make you a fan or anything (I've already been through this whole spiel with Matt too, :lol). Just explaining my take on the whole thing.
Cool to know you like Kabuto, too. If you get some time, check out Kamen Rider W. I watched it recently, and it completely eclipsed Kabuto and Blade as my favorite Rider series. So good.