Sadly a big step down from 999 in my opinion. The story is good and it has some interesting plot twists, but the whole game is built around those plot twists and so other factors of the game suffer for it. It took the multiple paths/endings idea from the previous game and absolutely went way too hard on it. The character cast is hugely downgraded (for example, they took one of the best characters from the previous game, Clover, and made her much worse in this one) and the presentation is honestly awful.

EDIT: This game honestly keeps going up my rankings in retrospect as time passes. Not really sure why. It's still not close to 999 but I think it's a really good game.