One day, you stumble upon a pair of abandoned marionettes, one called Marine and the other called Maria. You take Marine under your care while a rival and all-together obnoxious classmate called Arese takes Maria under hers'. Arese is under the impression that marionettes are nothing more than robots with a heart made of computer circuits, but your experience with part 1, where you apparently managed to raise the original marionette to near human form, has you convinced otherwise, and you intend to prove Arese wrong. Just as in part 1, communication is achieved by your picking a key word, and the marionette proceeding to speak about the topic, asking questions of you along the way. The topics of conversation tend to be quite simple, but grow in complexity, with your speaking about friendship, love, and so-forth.
Construction seems to be a bit simpler than in the original.
You can play around with parts to upgrade your Marionette in various ways, and as in part 1, you go into town to buy the parts. This time around, navigation is done through a point and click overhead map, rather than a 3D navigation field. Your goal seems to be to build up your Marionette to as close to human status as possible within the time frame of one month, and just as in part 1, everything you do is timed - not in the dynamic Shenmue sense, where time progresses gradually, but in the sense that each of your actions advance the game's time meter. Speak to the Marionette, and the time will advance by an hour or two, depending on how long your conversation progressed. Go to a shop in town, and time will advance just a bit.