Once again an improvement on the original game with so many extra options that make it an absolute joke if you decide to use them all. The difficulty is kind of all over the place, if you use everything on offer its really easy and if you don't its almost unfairly hard. The ranking system is once again very insubstantial with the moves being awarded in no way making up for the loss of on the fly powerups and upgrades. The amount of time it'll take you to memorize the stages to the point of keeping the A rank average up is too much especially with no easy way to replay stages once you've beaten them. If you get a really bad score one time that basically fucks your average for the rest of the playthrough with no way to undo it besides reloading a save. Really just not worth bothering with it at all. I'll give them credit for letting you use a couple of cyber elves without losing any points but you still need perfection regardless to keep your A rank status so just use as many as you feel like.

A decent time thanks to some of the problems of the original game getting ironed out. You barely have to interact with some of the mechanics though because of how short the game is and the moves you unlock by getting A ranks are so insubstantial (who even uses the buster that much) that you can ignore them entirely. Forms as well are just a weirdly implemented idea, you aren't getting more than a few without a guide. I had fun spamming cyber elves and using Zero's movement to speed through the game but it didn't leave much of an impression otherwise. Great music though.