I ultimately found this not quite as good as the first. They made a lot of the same mistakes as the first, did some sidegrades, but also managed some improvements (thank fucking god there's more than one biome)

There's some odd choices with enemies - garm and bolt saurians are crazy rare, there's only one medusa -nit tje mew enemies are fun enough to fight.

The much yelled about Dragonplague might be the most meaningless mechanic in the game. In 64 hours I found 1 pawn with it who I immediately dismissed and then had to dump mine into the ocean to cure her.

A postgame mechanic suffers the same problem. It hypes itself up but then isn't as bad as it claims and is mitigated very easily.

I found most of the new vocations boring. Trickster was terrible, Mystic Spearhand never felt strong enough, and Warfarer was too awkward to deal with.

The reworked old ones were mostly fine. I skipped mage & sorcerer for myself, but did all the others. Archer felt funky until I started abusing the dropkick->kick off->headshot combo which feels so goddamn good. Thief is still idiot-proof. Warrior actually feels good. Mystic Archer is still sick. Fighter exists.

Also it has cat people and as a vile heathen I think the girl cats are cute. My best friends in the end credits were the empress and the beastren girl who works in the Battahl cosmetic shop, and my faithful pawn, Lemu Ador, put up with me trying desperately to only put her in slutty clothes.

I also still prefer the first game's post-game and true final boss (especially in NG+!!!!). The ones here aren't bad but eh.

The story is also lol. The first one didnt have a very good one until around postgame and this one follows suit. Lots of snooze-worthy Game of Thrones lite shit. There isn't even a cute knight gal like in the first. Where's my she-goat cowards!!!! I guess the beast princess's bodyguard is close enough...

The microtransaction kerfuffle is also meaningless. The existence of them sucks. Nothing in the game has been fucked with to make you buy them either. The portcrystal DLC is worthless too as I believe there's a hard cap on how many can be out. And the postgame just plops a bunch of extra ones down too.

the busywork gets ridiculous (tho it isnt terribly hard to get all the chadley intel done), the minigames get tiresome, and chapter 13 is waaaaaay too fuckin long and filler-ridden for its own good.

that said - the music is superb as always (Go All Out Stamp and the arena rap being some highlights), the combat is even better than the first's, and the character writing is as impeccable as it was before.

some of the story is a bit eyerolling, and one plot thread is stretched way thin and has tens of hours between beats. counting myself ive seen three separate interpretations of the ending which is pretty impressive.

also that mind-flayer VR mission might be the absolute worst thing to put in this gameplay style. the ai in this game is not good enough to have a mission where you have to babysit your partners from constantly shifting aggro to adds instead of the boss