DD 2's approach to world design, its loving disinterest in commonly accepted quality of life features, its sometimes obscure but always interesting mechanics - all of that I hope will inspire games to come.
Unfortunately DD2 runs out of gas really quickly. There simply are not enough enemy types and environment types to sustain the game's length. I can only fight goblins and ogres on my way to a cave with nothing interesting in it so many times. Pair that with forgetable writing and a bland story, and despite loving my first 10 or so ours with it I quickly soured on DD and ultimately dropped it.

Give the team that animated the Sphinx a massive raise though, holy shit.

Wild that in 1997 Square released one of the most beloved video game stories ever made, only to spend the next 20 years trying to ruin it with every new addition to the canon.
Do you like Aerith's personality? Guess what, Zack did that.
7th Heaven, cool name for a bar? Zack did that.
Aerith selling flowers and offering Cloud a date as payment? You guessed it, Zack did it.

The Nibelheim flashback? Actually Genesis, maybe the worst character in any final fantasy game ever (And what a title that is in a post XIII and XVI world), was just out of screen at all times reading fucking 5th grade poetry.

The soundtrack is incredible to a point where it almost tricks you into thinking CC's cutscenes are emotionally resonant. The combat is very playable, and how the wheel of fortune ties into Zacks thoughts and memories, and how that informs his combat abilities, is a really cool idea. But the writing, especially for Zack and Genesis, is so bad that I kinda wish I hadnt played this.