I'm honestly somewhat blown away at how much I ended up enjoying Torna- The Golden Country, given how largely cool I was on the base game. But Torna's position as a standalone expansion basically ends up resolving my biggest complaints with 2, while maintaining a lot of it's positives. Such as the fantastic environments, impressive cutscene direction, a fun cast of characters, a compelling narrative and stellar music.

Being a shorter experience leads to Torna cutting out a lot of the system bloat that I found overwhelming in 2, despite largely keeping a lot of those same systems. This is mainly due to the fact that the game has a set cast of characters rather than the gacha nightmare of 2, this means that it's a lot easier to engage with the games systems more naturally, and do so in a way that doesn't feel like it's getting in the way of the general progression of the game. I never had a moment where I got a new blade and thus felt like I needed to grind to get their progression caught up to everybody else. Instead it felt like all of the game systems just click together, working in conjunction with the games normal quest progression to make your character progression feel more natural.

This is in addition to the tweaks to the combat helping the strengths of 2's combat system shine a lot more easily, while also adding more active elements to maintain and engage with in the combat that only improve what was already there. I still don't think the game is especially great at explaining it's various systems and mechanics, but the more streamlined nature of Torna as an expansion means that it feels far less overwhelming.

The biggest thing holding the game back from being something truly special for me is the side quest gating that happens in the main story. I understand it's purpose, and on paper I actually like the idea of tying in gameplay mechanics to support the narrative idea of you building a bond with the people of Torna. The problem is that the execution results in the game grinding to a halt and you feel like you're just doing busy work when the narrative stakes are far too high for the sort of quests you're dealing with. It's a shame as well because doing those sidequests did actually help to increase my investment in those side characters and the locations, but seeding the sidequests more naturally and pacing them out better would've gone a long way towards making the sidequest gating easier to stomach.

But all in all, this was an incredibly impressive expansion that basically addressed my issues with the first and second game, while also serving as a satisfying narrative gut punch of a prequel. The more streamlined nature ends up cutting out a lot of the baggage that I felt weighed down both previous games, while still maintaining the qualities that have kept me interested in the series despite my various gripes.

what do you mean the sidequests were mandatory, i somehow avoided that reminder both times its supposed to appear with how i did them as soon as i could lmaooo
awesome game btw, i didn't play 2 and instead watched its cutscenes because i saw All That (its apparently longer than 3) and just felt pain but instead kept Torna to play myself because it sounded sad & tragic (aweseome) and the physical version came out in my bday, so, with my experience, i think playing it like how i did may actually be the ideal way because its shorter, to the point, and all the emotions hit at the end while not trying to extend itself to a ridiculous degree (xenoblade 2's ending is great, but i could tell the way there is all over the place just from cutscenes alone)
seeing what happens at the end really still managed to shake me because you'd been there for the past like 30 hours and goddd it hits, yeah
also, we need more 27 year old girl protagonists in jrpgs because Lora is really cool