an undeniably good game with some glaring flaws. part of me feels like my expectations were too high, and the other part feels like i am justified with my critisicms.

The story, in concept, sounds fantastic, and it has its moments, but I feel like the execution here was very messy. it sort of felt like there were multiple chapters of pretty much nothing happening. The first one also had similar issues with its pacing, but that was only for the first chapter and small bits of later chapters. this one has weird pacing all over the place. There were also places in the story that just felt like rehashes of the original judgment. The Finale was pretty great, though.

The characters were good. In some places, great, even. I don't really have anything to complain about character wise.

The gameplay is improved compared to the original, which is good, but there are somethings that I found annoying in the original that were not fixed. where are the toughness ZZ's and above?

music is overall an improvement over the first game too. unwavering belief is probably one of the best final boss themes in an RGG game, period.

Overall, i'd say this game is definitely worth it if you enjoyed the original, but I think its an overall step down.