This game is awesome, builds off the first game really well while still keeping to the same general structure of the first game. The story I think is a considerable improvement as it focuses more on the main group of characters (Peter, Miles, MJ, Harry) and the connection between them while the first game's story is better at fleshing out the world surrounding the main characters. The more focused narrative was really nice and if you 100% complete the game as I did, some of the cutscenes and the end of side quest lines are fun teases for what could come in the third game.

Really great game, kind of a hybrid between 3D platformer and a 3D zelda esc and the two styles marry together wonderfully. of course the main standout is the controls, all the abilities you gain are super useful, the equibable spirits are very useful and fun to collect and the combat is super fun and satisfying. you earn additional max hearts in small platforming challenges called voids and all of them even if they're not hard are really well designed and super fun to run through.
This game is a high recommendation.

To give you an example of how bad the difficulty spike is, I thought the final boss was easier then the last two worlds.
Was gonna give this an 8/10 but then the difficulty spike sucker punches you in the face and then continues to go up.
Other than that, great visual style, simple but effective story, fun characters, great use of the mechanics. Also loved how pretty much every single level introduced some new object or enemy, kept it fresh.
Something positive I will say about the difficulty is that most of it still feels accomplishable, and to say I felt great after beating some of these levels would be an understatement.
Overall, good game that I would recommend but also warn of the difficulty spike.

this review made me hate star ratings more than ever. I loved the time I spent with this game but I can't place It above 3 1/2 stars because of all the technical problems, if there were no technical problems I'd probably give it 4 1/2 stars because behind all the glitches and bugs you can tell the devs took all the criticism from sword and shield and tried their best to make this game the ultimate pokemon experience. I could go on and on about how I hate the pokemon company as a conglomerate and they should give game freak more time to work out the technical problems but I'd be screaming into a wall at this point.