This is really 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, the combat is much better than the first game's (weapons that aren't one-handed swords are good!) and characters are generally better even if they still have way too few lines they repeat, but the game has this godawful structure where basically nothing happens in the first part and you just have to grind the requirements to get to the second

And the thing is, I don't think the second part is really interesting either. It basically makes you explore 4 TERRIBLE season-themed dungeons, terrrible because unlike RF1's really interesting dungeon formula they just make you do a ton of dumb fetch quests inside. The most egregious is probably in the summer dungeon where you have to grow a whole field of pineapples, this takes 18 days by the way. 18 fucking days of back-and-forth in the dungeon what the hell