With the way the prequel ended I had feared this would turn into some kind of Gundam ripoff. If only. Instead what it delivers is purestrain cringe worse than DQ11.
It’s especially fond of forcing you to lose or ‘lose’ battles: In addition to a couple battles that literally cannot be won it features battles you win but the story acts like you lost, and battles you win but some random event occurs immediately afterward that requires a 3rd party to magically appear and rescue you. It’s a real bad look. Speaking of battles, the combat remains mostly unchanged (physical attacks miss more often, magical attacks are slightly faster, a new limit-breakish feature has been added) and just as tiresome as ever. Bosses are still massive damage sponges and this time around most of them have access to some kind of healing ability as well, making abuse of the Delay system pretty much mandatory.
Structurally there’s been a huge change however as the Tokyo Xanadu elements have been mostly removed to be replaced with some Suikoden elements instead; namely the whole wandering the countryside to pick up people to populate your base with bit. This results in most of the game being somewhat non-linear and far more engaging than the prequel from an exploration perspective (though do be aware that the second epilogue returns to that previous ‘explore school’ -> ‘explore old schoolhouse’ format).
That’s right: Second epilogue. The first has you controlling characters from the Crossbell games and feels incredibly disconnected from everything else. So yeah, content-wise this game may actually surpass the prequel… making the painful plot developments and monotonous combat a real shame.
Is it worth playing? If you’ve already completed the first then you may as well resolve that cliffhanger. If you haven’t played it though then you’re likely best off avoiding both of them (avoid the DLC regardless, as II‘s is even more worthless than the first’s). If you do decide to play (the GOG version of) it though, take note that the older 1.4 version has to be installed in order for achievements to unlock.