[FOR THOSE THAT WANT MY OPINION ON DDS1 - SEE DDS1 PAGE]
So, after slogging my carcass against DDS1's narrative folly for 50+ hours, I had low hopes going into DDS2. So how did she fare? It's... complicated, and I guess I should frontload this by saying that, unfortunately, I think of the DDS duology as a failed experiment for that reason.
To focus on what has been improved:
GAMEPLAY:
I noticed immediately how the Mantra system got re-balanced, with essential skills like Mind Charge becoming noticeably cheaper (not to mention sellable Plants meaning that the system would have worked even with DDS1's economy) - but also how the hexagon-based system means that you're no longer bottlenecked into one build / end up with as many excess skills you don't need (you can get Bufula without needing to go through Mabufu/Ice Boost, for example, which is a nice QoL nod, same going to how inactive party members still gain Mantra without unlocking the respective passive).
Unfortunately it leaves the system feeling rather directionless, and despite those aforementioned efforts to allow the player to cut down on inventory clutter - there were a fair few times where I'd have to change directions on the Mantra grid to actually get the skills I wanted for a (at the time, anyway...) reasonable price. It's hard to explain, but for those who have played this game, you probably get what I mean.
I should add that because of the way Seraph works (having the highest unlocks and stats of Serph and Sera combined, encouraging the player to diversify both their kits), a valiant attempt was made to appeal to 'lets view end-game spoilers and the Final Boss out of context' junkies like myself. But in that same vain, I think there were some rather fundamental misteps, such as (when Serph takes a long sabbatical around 30% of the way into the story (more on that later)), your underleveled party members... don't actually struggle that much against mobs they have no business surviving? Oh, and Heat inherits Roland's moveset despite being unrelated characters (didn't he use Chi Blast against us during the first EGG visit? Couldn't we have had that unlocked for us at least, and save us 5-6 hours of grinding him Power Charge?)
As for the dungeon design, it's... sort of better? I had a lot better luck with the encounter rate this time around (until the Sun, anyway... I had Estoma spray taped down the entire time and I still got hassled), and the actual dungeon designs have either some semi-neat ideas (the EGG re-visit comes to mind for some reason), or don't over-extend in the same way DDS1's decided to. Although it's done in such a way that I can't really tell if the dungeon design is so infinitely better it's worthy of this praise... or if I'm developing Stockholm Syndrome.
Karma rings and the 7/8ths+ Solar Noise 'Berserk mode' are aspects of DDS2 that I feel as though could have been in DDS1, but they're here now, and they do what they say on the tin. Bit of a 'bare minimum' inclusion, I know, but eh.
STORY:
"Delicious, finally, some actual fucking substance for once" I thought initially, as Roland decided to give us a lore dump that wasn't just obscurantist platitudes. Alas... 'initially' is the key word here.
Let's start with the character writing, and while I think a lot of the cast aren't done as dirty as DDS1, there's still a bunch of problems. Argilla, for example, isn't nearly as belligerent here as she was in DDS1, but the writers have replaced that behaviour with... absolutely nothing (keep that thought in the back of your minds, 'kay? Bitchin'). Meanwhile, Heat's rivalry with Serph, for as much as 'stuff' was actually done with him (including 'recalling' a previous timeline where Serph was actually your garden-variety brand of 'I'm a Atheist Scientist playing god'), the one thing I find distracting is how little transition is given between Heat coming off the fight with Jenna Angel, and a tenuous alliance with her and Margot Cuvier in regards to the affairs of Sera (even as Jenna has Madame shot around the same point Serph leaves the party for the first time). Speaking of Jenna - she gets decidedly little beyond deciding to double-cross both the Karma Society and the party. But suddenly (and as a corollary to all of the above) when everyone becomes Solar Data in order to save the world, tensions between Jenna and Margot Cuvier are just sort of... forgotten about, even though Jenna had Madame... oh, I dunno FUCKING SHOT IN THE BACK?!
Gale and Cielo, despite having a miniature Bert and Ernie routine, also serve as a microcosm of this narrative direction. Gale is also stretched in two different directions between his own 'previous life' with Jenna, and finding Lupa's son (the latter of which is closed prematurely after the Kumbhanda minigame (which as an aside, that minigame is hilarious)), and what do we get out of Gale and Jenna stabbing each other? Absolutely goddamn nothing my friend! Cielo's arc is cut off just as prematurely, after slagging off what Robin & Zephyr fans will call 'James of Team Rocket' that there's more to life than an obsession with strength.
Now, you might recall me saying I'd remind you of a similar narrative mistake when bringing up Argilla - and this applies to basically every character. In other words: the whole 'everyone dies but is actually alive as Solar Data in order to save the world' thing in the endgame. I get that a lot of this is the game using Hinduism as a frame of reference (a lot of SMT games seem friendly with Hindu lore, and... no, I'm not judging), and while the game does do it's best to cushion the blow after Brahman's defeat - I can't help but feel as though this is another instance of the game sacrificing narrative consistency for the sake of a nod to 'symbolism'. I even dedicated a page-long anecdote to my issues with 'symbolic references' in my hence-scrapped Xenosaga retrospective (Tl;dr if I had a quid for every pseudo-intellectual who decided to jack themselves off to Carl Jung in place of an actual narrative explanation because "ThAt's wHaT THe gaMEs aRe BasED oFF oF", I'd make Elon Musk bankrupt) - and it's an issue in the case of DDS2 because the whole 'they're dead but also not at the same time' trope and similar like it is something you have to handle with extreme care. Sure, we get Seraph and Ardha's designs out of the deal, but what is that supposed to mean when, in your attempts to curry favour with your cultural Indian cousin down the way from Japan, you've landed yourself with another instance of 'the power of friendship'? I'm not accusing this of cultural appropriation or anything (I'm too red-pilled to make that accusation...), but (at the risk of sounding like I'm talking in circles) it is distracting, and the narrative stakes take a hit as a result.
MUSIC & GRAPHICS:
Divine Identity and the standard Battle Theme are just as much the bangers I expected. Not much to say here, either. Oh, and a bunch of the clipping issues in cutscenes are gone (or at least lesser, although I did notice with the first 'Team Rocket' cutscene, Jessie was inexplicably glitching in and out of the Matrix as she went to run). Not to mention UI touch-ups and the like.
So, after slogging my carcass against DDS1's narrative folly for 50+ hours, I had low hopes going into DDS2. So how did she fare? It's... complicated, and I guess I should frontload this by saying that, unfortunately, I think of the DDS duology as a failed experiment for that reason.
To focus on what has been improved:
GAMEPLAY:
I noticed immediately how the Mantra system got re-balanced, with essential skills like Mind Charge becoming noticeably cheaper (not to mention sellable Plants meaning that the system would have worked even with DDS1's economy) - but also how the hexagon-based system means that you're no longer bottlenecked into one build / end up with as many excess skills you don't need (you can get Bufula without needing to go through Mabufu/Ice Boost, for example, which is a nice QoL nod, same going to how inactive party members still gain Mantra without unlocking the respective passive).
Unfortunately it leaves the system feeling rather directionless, and despite those aforementioned efforts to allow the player to cut down on inventory clutter - there were a fair few times where I'd have to change directions on the Mantra grid to actually get the skills I wanted for a (at the time, anyway...) reasonable price. It's hard to explain, but for those who have played this game, you probably get what I mean.
I should add that because of the way Seraph works (having the highest unlocks and stats of Serph and Sera combined, encouraging the player to diversify both their kits), a valiant attempt was made to appeal to 'lets view end-game spoilers and the Final Boss out of context' junkies like myself. But in that same vain, I think there were some rather fundamental misteps, such as (when Serph takes a long sabbatical around 30% of the way into the story (more on that later)), your underleveled party members... don't actually struggle that much against mobs they have no business surviving? Oh, and Heat inherits Roland's moveset despite being unrelated characters (didn't he use Chi Blast against us during the first EGG visit? Couldn't we have had that unlocked for us at least, and save us 5-6 hours of grinding him Power Charge?)
As for the dungeon design, it's... sort of better? I had a lot better luck with the encounter rate this time around (until the Sun, anyway... I had Estoma spray taped down the entire time and I still got hassled), and the actual dungeon designs have either some semi-neat ideas (the EGG re-visit comes to mind for some reason), or don't over-extend in the same way DDS1's decided to. Although it's done in such a way that I can't really tell if the dungeon design is so infinitely better it's worthy of this praise... or if I'm developing Stockholm Syndrome.
Karma rings and the 7/8ths+ Solar Noise 'Berserk mode' are aspects of DDS2 that I feel as though could have been in DDS1, but they're here now, and they do what they say on the tin. Bit of a 'bare minimum' inclusion, I know, but eh.
STORY:
"Delicious, finally, some actual fucking substance for once" I thought initially, as Roland decided to give us a lore dump that wasn't just obscurantist platitudes. Alas... 'initially' is the key word here.
Let's start with the character writing, and while I think a lot of the cast aren't done as dirty as DDS1, there's still a bunch of problems. Argilla, for example, isn't nearly as belligerent here as she was in DDS1, but the writers have replaced that behaviour with... absolutely nothing (keep that thought in the back of your minds, 'kay? Bitchin'). Meanwhile, Heat's rivalry with Serph, for as much as 'stuff' was actually done with him (including 'recalling' a previous timeline where Serph was actually your garden-variety brand of 'I'm a Atheist Scientist playing god'), the one thing I find distracting is how little transition is given between Heat coming off the fight with Jenna Angel, and a tenuous alliance with her and Margot Cuvier in regards to the affairs of Sera (even as Jenna has Madame shot around the same point Serph leaves the party for the first time). Speaking of Jenna - she gets decidedly little beyond deciding to double-cross both the Karma Society and the party. But suddenly (and as a corollary to all of the above) when everyone becomes Solar Data in order to save the world, tensions between Jenna and Margot Cuvier are just sort of... forgotten about, even though Jenna had Madame... oh, I dunno FUCKING SHOT IN THE BACK?!
Gale and Cielo, despite having a miniature Bert and Ernie routine, also serve as a microcosm of this narrative direction. Gale is also stretched in two different directions between his own 'previous life' with Jenna, and finding Lupa's son (the latter of which is closed prematurely after the Kumbhanda minigame (which as an aside, that minigame is hilarious)), and what do we get out of Gale and Jenna stabbing each other? Absolutely goddamn nothing my friend! Cielo's arc is cut off just as prematurely, after slagging off what Robin & Zephyr fans will call 'James of Team Rocket' that there's more to life than an obsession with strength.
Now, you might recall me saying I'd remind you of a similar narrative mistake when bringing up Argilla - and this applies to basically every character. In other words: the whole 'everyone dies but is actually alive as Solar Data in order to save the world' thing in the endgame. I get that a lot of this is the game using Hinduism as a frame of reference (a lot of SMT games seem friendly with Hindu lore, and... no, I'm not judging), and while the game does do it's best to cushion the blow after Brahman's defeat - I can't help but feel as though this is another instance of the game sacrificing narrative consistency for the sake of a nod to 'symbolism'. I even dedicated a page-long anecdote to my issues with 'symbolic references' in my hence-scrapped Xenosaga retrospective (Tl;dr if I had a quid for every pseudo-intellectual who decided to jack themselves off to Carl Jung in place of an actual narrative explanation because "ThAt's wHaT THe gaMEs aRe BasED oFF oF", I'd make Elon Musk bankrupt) - and it's an issue in the case of DDS2 because the whole 'they're dead but also not at the same time' trope and similar like it is something you have to handle with extreme care. Sure, we get Seraph and Ardha's designs out of the deal, but what is that supposed to mean when, in your attempts to curry favour with your cultural Indian cousin down the way from Japan, you've landed yourself with another instance of 'the power of friendship'? I'm not accusing this of cultural appropriation or anything (I'm too red-pilled to make that accusation...), but (at the risk of sounding like I'm talking in circles) it is distracting, and the narrative stakes take a hit as a result.
MUSIC & GRAPHICS:
Divine Identity and the standard Battle Theme are just as much the bangers I expected. Not much to say here, either. Oh, and a bunch of the clipping issues in cutscenes are gone (or at least lesser, although I did notice with the first 'Team Rocket' cutscene, Jessie was inexplicably glitching in and out of the Matrix as she went to run). Not to mention UI touch-ups and the like.