How does one of the greatest and most well thought games of it's time get THIS as a direct sequel? I don't consider myself overly critical of media, but this is one of only a few video games I downright despise. I feel the need to mention the few good things it does, however. Some of the worlds feel cool to explore such as Gormott and the lefterian archipelago, even if their status as smaller titans leaves them feeling disconnected instead of pieces of a larger whole like the first game. I also liked Morag and Zeke. That's basically it.
None of the initial characters are likable. Rex is an annoying character who feels like he comes from a crappy anime from a decade ago, with Pyra serving as generic Waifubait (guys she can cook and has giant boobs isn't that cool?) Nia's just kind of a bitch and not in an interesting 'there's more to her here' kind of way like Yukari in Persona 3 (there is more to her but it's not super interesting) and Dromarch who's just kinda there. Then there's Tora, a character who builds an underage looking girl it's implied several times he wants to fuck, and nobody pays any attention to this other than 'that's a bit weird.'
While the first game didn't have the best combat, it's dragged down in 2 dramatically by two things. 1: enemies having a shit load of health and 2: the blade system. Instead of getting new abilities with some crazy method like progressing through the damn game, enemies will drop core crystals that can spawn a new blade, which are like Stands from JoJo's if you removed literally anything cool about them. Most of the time you'll get absolutely useless blades, occasionally getting something decent (which will probably look like an anime girl catering to a weird-ass fetish) getting abilities that are actually good is almost completely RNG dependant, like a shitty free mobile game instead of something you paid 60 euro on. Every blade also has field skills, which are needed to access certain areas of the map. These take a long time to fill, as it individually cycles through every blade in your party that has the field skill needed, only speeding up after multiple failed attempts.
The story is also bland and predictable. I didn't enjoy many story beats revolving around the main 6 characters from the start (even if Zeke and Morag are actually good characters) The start of the game is also unbearable due to the sheer amount of tutorials, which are useless and you will skip, which leads to you skipping the 5% which are actually needed.
Overall, don't play this game. It isn't worth your time.