This game is an improvement from FC for sure but it's still very flawed for me.
For one thing, the pacing in the game is very bad. Every chapter until chapter 6 has the same repetitive structure of going to a country, an ouroboros member is causing problems, beat them, rinse and repeat. It's tedious. The game often doesn't even try to make these chapters feel distinct apart from chapters 3 and 5. The game is also filled with a ridiculous amount of backtracking which makes the tedium even worse.

Another thing is I did not personally vibe with Estelle and Joshua's dynamic very much. It had potential, but I didn't enjoy their personalities too much.

Estelle is a decent protagonist who's main characteristic is that she's optimistic no matter the situation she's placed in, and will also be a beacon of hope to everyone around her. That's a trope I'm typically fine with but Estelle doesn't do it in an interesting way imo. She lacks any flaws that would make her feel more grounded for me. By the end she didn't impress me much. Her dynamic with Renne was pretty good though and has a lot of potential moving forward in the series.

Joshua is a different beast entirely. He was incredibly disappointing especially with the amount of potential he had. He barely accomplished anything when he was separated from Estelle, and spends most of the entire game sitting on his airship instead. The game decided not to give more introspection for his character during his time alone which is a puzzling decision. Instead he either does very inconsequential things or just sits on his ass. Estelle reunites with Joshua again in chapter 6, and in that same chapter she convinces him to join her again, which I felt is very rushed as she essentially just talk no jutsus his lifelong trauma away. It overly simplifies what could have been an interesting exploration on his lack of self worth, and martyr complex. Joshua's dynamic with Loewe I liked quite a bit though.

Speaking of Loewe, he's by and large the best character of the game for me. Very enigmatic with a lot of presence, a cool design, and just being plain badass. His role in the story was very strong too as it greatly emphasizes the game's core message of forming connections with others and how doing that can enable people to walk towards a brighter future, free from tragedy. Loewe is the antithesis of that merely believing in "testing humanity's worth" by a trial with fire through conflict essentially. His clash of ideals with Joshua is one of the main highlights of the game despite it's very short runtime. Loewe's conclusion while rushed, is one of the few payoffs that worked for me. All in all a very good character.

This segues into another problem I have with this game where it spreads itself too thin by spending time on things that don't matter much while integral elements such as Joshua/Loewe dynamic and Weissman's motivations get barely any screentime to make them more impactful. Though for the former it still worked for the most part.

The other characters are somewhat improved in SC partly due to how some of the antagonists serve as foils to them which helps their characters get explored more. Though the execution of this I'm very iffy on. Scherazard and Zin's struggles are not handled well for me as it directly ties into their foils' storylines, which are barely present in the game to begin with. So it's hard for me to care about them. Agate gets a cool arc in chapter 5 and is an example of a well handled arc in this game. Olivier is fairly interesting though his story was backloaded at the very end, and didn't even show up for very much. Kloe didn't do anything particularly standout in this game which is disappointing as I decently enjoyed her character in FC and believed she had potential. Tita isn't all that great but she did her job servicing Agate's arc. Kevin is a standout character who is not only incredibly entertaining, but interesting as well. His scene where he kills Weissman really makes me excited for his character in 3rd.

The antagonists themselves were okay with the highlights being Loewe and Renne. Weissman was an underwhelming main villain for me. He barely had any screentime, and didn't do much with the screentime that he has. His motivations of basically wanting humanity to become ubermensches to stop all conflict was fascinating but it literally comes in the last hour of the game, and it more so feels like an excuse he's using to cause more suffering to people as he enjoys it.

All in all the story was fairly disappointing for me despite the huge potential it had.

The ost was fairly decent throughout with a few notable standouts like Silver Will which is often noted as being Loewe's theme.

As for the gameplay, it's very good. It is basically a mix of tactical RPG combat and traditional turned based JRPG combat, and it's great. You have to react to enemy arts as you can cancel them out which is cool. The gameplay is made easier with arts such as earth wall, which is borderline necessary for some fights. The enemies though are incredibly annoying with how they consistently spam status effects, and almost always operate as a group which makes it difficult sometimes to react to them. They also often pullout very cheap moves that can just one shot you without warning (looking at you Weissman). Hopefully the later games make the enemies less annoying. Really interested to see how the gameplay evolves from here.

Overall, I really wanted to like this game more especially given its near universal praise, but sadly it just has too many glaring issues for me to ignore. I am still very excited to experience 3rd and the later games as they looked very appealing to me.