I can't hesitate at all to say that, as a game, it's better than Portal 1. There's no question about it. What sets Portal 1 higher than it is the fact that it basically was created from nothing. There was no template, no precursor that demonstrated how you make a game like that. It's the video game equivalent of "Let there be light." From the ether, they extracted both brilliant level design, fantastic gameplay, and a brilliant story and character. So from that view, of course Portal 2 is better. It had Portal 1 to build off of. And, similarly, that's what made GLaDOS this amazing, perfect character in Portal 2- they could build off of her from Portal 1 and give her this great narrative and arc. That's not to disparage the other characters, of course, in any other game any character in this game would be the stand out character that the entire franchise following it would base their game around and make spinoffs for and push hard to promote, it's just GLaDOS's story was that much better.
