Random disorganized thoughts:

I don't really know what to feel about Ni No Kuni 2. The game plays like kusoge but it doesn't look like one, you know? With that beautiful Ghibli art style, it just doesn't feel like it should be as mid as it is.

On the topic of Ghibli, the art style is definitely the main draw of the game. Which makes it a big bummer that, unlike NNK1, there are actually no Ghibli animated cutscenes in this game. Everything is either the characters just standing there or 3d animations. The latter of which still looks really pretty and all, but it doesn't hold a flipping candle to the real deal.

The big thing I wanna type about is the combat, what's up with it?
Each battle consists of a flat circle where you gotta hit the enemy a whole bunch while dodging and blocking, which seems easy enough. But the enemies attack so fast that you really never have time to react, and when you do react, a lot of attacks have such long attack animations that you still get hit after your dodge animation ends. Blocking is also an annoyance as even if you block an attack, you'll most likely fly backwards like 40 meters at least and lie on the ground for too long. Quite frankly it sucks to be defensive, and as a result, most fights just boil down to running toward an enemy spamming X to do quick attacks and casting spells whenever possible to hopefully stagger the opps while spamming healing items to tank through the damage. Something that sounds easy but your character has a priority in getting attacked actually so you end up running in a circle hoping your two friends take care of it for an obnoxious amount of time.

Things in NNK2 just generally take too long. Like, scenes just play out for too long. A menu opening up during a conversation takes too long. Menus popping up from a menu take too long. It just makes one feel like you're wasting your time. I ended up skipping most scenes just cuz they were so pointlessly long.

NNK2 is about an annoying brat, an isekai protagonist, and Lisa Simpson on their journey to unite the world against a big bad evil that wants to bring back his old kingdom literally called Allegoria. It's nothing special, honestly, and it's bogged down by the main character having the worst voice ever. I dunno what it is about it but Evan screeches in a monotone voice at all times. I haven't seen the voice actor in anything else so I dunno if she just struggled to play a little boy or something but jesus. Cutscenes ended up being ruined when the cool kid himself went and made a speech in this grating squeaking metal door noise they call a voice and had to be skipped for my sanity.

I like the music. That's all I really have to say about it though, it's a just really good orchestral soundtrack with a lot of pleasant tunes. Not my cup of tea but definitely something worth peeking. Particularly "Kingdom by the Sea."

Overall, do I think it's a good game? No. Did I enjoy playing it? Yes. Do I regret buying the game twice? Kinda, yeah.

Loop8 is a lot like YIIK, in that they're both filled to the brim with such great and fantastic ideas, and yet not a single one is implemented well. The only truly good thing about it are the graphics, which are actually so incredibly pretty. So why am I giving it a good score? Because it's PEAK KUSOGE. Here's a few things worth pointing out:

The combat is slow. Characters move independently of you and love buffing to the point where they almost rarely actually attack. You only fight this one generic orb as a generic enemy and there are no other enemies (aside from bosses). Combat scales depending on how many characters you have with you which means it's actually easier to fight everything alone than taking any party members who'll just waste time buffing everyone. There is no resource management, because you heal to full right as you get to the boss anyway. No items either. An interesting design choice is that bosses will be easier if the person being possessed likes you, but then they make it legitimately impossible if they hate you, meaning you have to loop (more on that later). "Thankfully" only like 2% of your total time is spent actually in combat.

The walking is slow (saving grace being a fast travel system that doesn't work in the mirror world). Every second irl is a minute ingame so time flies by mad fast, making the slow walking even more arduous.

There's barely any story. The game lore dumps at you at the start and then the rest of the game is pure vagueposts.

The characters have such, suuuch potential to be good, which makes it a shame that the game doesn't even bother showing it to you for whatever reason? Like the character will say something super important to their character arc and then it gets swept under the rug and it's never mentioned again. If there's a character growth, that happens off-screen... Most of your time is spent talking to them, skipping their one line, selecting the one suggestion you want to pick, skipping their one line again, get affection, repeat ad infinitum. Not very engaging.

The loop mechanic, while sounding cool, is implemented like butt. You reset the timeline, make everyone you failed to save alive again, except nobody remembers it, INCLUDING your character. Your stats and relationships get reset but you get them back twice as fast, so oh joy, more grinding and repeating dialogue. Speaking of repeating dialogue, EVERY line resets. That one time a character threw a wall of text at you? Gotta fast foward that again, and trust me, that shit PILES ON. Your blessings carry over though, so you don't need to grind as much.

BUT the reason I find it so fun is how accidentally ridiculous it is. Like why does my guy so desperately want to pork his cousin? Why can I date grandma? Why is there an epilogue if you ended up romancing your cousin, that is just her talking for a good 10 minutes with a still image? Why is there a character that will actually give you a game over if you talk to them while they're happy? What the FUCK is Demon Sight???

All in all 8/10 recommended for kusoge enjoyers.