Coming off of playing both Ryza 1 and 2, the expectation was more of the good crafting gameplay that Ryza had. But the crafting system and the way that crafting recipes are gathered had changed enough for me to take notice. Having the crafting system be on a grid of different elements is a good idea but having so many different options and so many items to make, crafting in Sophie 2 can both seem and be time consuming. Using the auto-place feature is something that is offered but I recommend not using it as it doesn't take advantage of party skills that can be used during crafting. So I ended up doing a mixture of both throughout my playthrough. The plus side to this is that it is way easier to get certain traits on the different items that are crafted. The recipe discovery still leaves a little to be desired as almost every recipe had tasks attached to them to unlock them. From gathering/obtaining a certain material, to craft an item with a certain trait or fighting x amount of enemies, the problem in itself is not the fetch quest nature of these tasks. It's that none of anything that was done before hand does not count to the count, only when the player is working toward the recipe does anything count. This gets really annoying about mid way through the game, as most of the requirements are material requirements and the player would have most likely already found them, making them have to go back and look for the item. The battle system is turn-based this time around, and at first I did not really enjoy it. But as I got further into the game and got more party members/skills, chaining different moves and breaking auras and landing major damage never gets old. The story of the game takes a sort of back seat, but the character interactions (also goes for their side stories) and I will give it credit in not taking apart in a lot of the anime tropes that I see in these games, such as the hotspring scene where instead of the usual girls in the hotspring and the boys get branded as pervs for going near them, instead they all hang out and have a good time. It was refreshing to see something like that. The environments are very nice to look at, and seeing the areas have the weather change is very cool to see. Although, having the first half of the main areas be nothing but forest or a grassy plain makes it get really old, pretty fast. Music was a bit of shock this time around, as there are so many different battle themes that I have heard through out the game and they all sound really good. Overall, if a comfy game is what you are looking for, then you wouldn't be too hard pressed to give Sophie 2 a try.