The combat is largely unchanged from CS1. A step down from previous Trails titles in terms of difficult and complexity, but still decent overall.

CS2's issues lie much more with its story. The setup this game got from CS1 should have given it plenty of good opportunities for a strong narrative. The Noble/Reformist tensions and the outbreak of Civil War are pretty fertile ground for a story. Yet CS2 fails to make good use of them. Whatever ideological justifications for conflict the first game set up and never touched on here except to make the villains look stupid for having such silly beliefs, whereas the war itself barely even feels impactful with the most noticeable change being all the people complaining about their taxes being too high.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bad game, but it is a letdown. CS1 laid a decent enough foundation but CS2 failed to make use of it. And while the gameplay is still enjoyable enough to keep the game afloat, it's barely changed from CS1 which itself was a simplification of previous series entries.

I'm too invested in the series to stop here and I imagine the same is true of anyone who made it this far. I certainly wont drop it just because of the issues here. But this is definitely a low point for the series that I just hope it recovers from.