I made the mistake of going into this game immediately after finishing 7th Dragon 2020. I thought "Okay, I was a little tired of the relatively basic mechanics by the end of the first game but I'm sure the sequel will mix things up enough to make it feel fresh!" Unfortunately, 7th Dragon 2020-II is functionally identical. There's one new class that I didn't particularly care for and a bunch of balance changes that, as far as I could tell, only made my characters weaker. That second part is important because it made the game feel like it was pushing me to grind a bunch of extra levels right at the start because no one could survive more than two or three hits and all the costs of skills went way up so I couldn't get much stronger without committing to lots of extra fights.

On top of all that, the story sets itself up to be an exact repeat of the previous game. Oh, you killed the True Dragon who is a god that created all other dragons? Well, there's six more attacking Tokyo, please go kill them. Maybe there's something interesting later on but getting what appears to be largely the same story isn't worth the investment right now. Maybe someday I'll return to this and enjoy it, but not right now.