hoo boy, this was certainly a game. I will give them credit, this did feel more like a sequel continuing on the story of the first game than IMOQ's "disc 2" approach so that's something. Gameplay is mostly the same as the first volume, they added a weapon switch feature but what's the point when your heavy sword can still pretty much stunlock most enemies to death anyways. This game is also padded out the ass, with pretty much 75% of all the mandatory dungeons being completely frivolous as to why you are even there. I much preferred IMOQs approach of letting the player just choose whatever dungeons they wanted as long as they got the required items. This game just handholds you through the most straightforward boring ass dungeons to get exactly what it puts there and it gets old fast. In terms of plot, this game doesn't really impress me either. I found none of the main characters likable in Volume 1 and this game didn't really change my mind on anyone. Cutscenes are long and don't animate that much. This game also has a tournament arc despite the first game already having one and so help me god if Volume 3 has one too I'm going to lose it. The game was incredibly boring. My save file reports that I had only spent roughly 15 hours playing through this game but it genuinely felt like 50, that's how monotonous and boring I felt this game was. If this series was 4 volumes like IMOQ was I would definitely have tapped out by now, but there's only one volume left, I've made it this far, I might as well see how this whole thing ends. Though considering both what happened in .hack quarantine, and how these past 2 G.U. volumes have been going, I can't say I'm expecting this series to stick the landing.