there are cool things added but unfortunately the loss of being able to set allies to manual and keep them on standby to be called as an assist for combos was disappointing especially when characters like nina have moves that would be so good for said purpose. the big areas in which you fight would also fight would also make this awkward even if you could do such a thing. not a fan of how a lot of moves simply don't affect a juggled enemy beyond doing damage and letting them just drop to the ground and not experience knockback is really disappointing. vanguard assaults can be cool but not being to do the manually aimed one at will in combat without awkwardly trying to get every enemy offscreen first is frustrating (and also trying not to accidentally fly out of the fight area and escape in the process)
also, not a fan of losing max AP whenever you get in hitstun, making the game rough on characters who don't get access to no guard's super armor and even more of a pain in boss fights where there's only one enemy where it sucks to try and regain max AP.
I like ray's english VA and the princess is mega cute though I wanna pinch her face

needs polish (enemies sometimes throw projectiles before they even show up on screen once, food doesn't always render on top of everything else, doing a running jump fails and comes out as a roll as if I'd instantly landed half the time for me, other minor gripes) but the design choices are at odds with what I want out of the game in the first place so even if they were fixed I don't think I'd add much more than .5 to my rating. I really do not like that special moves can't be used unless full, meaning you have to commit to using them only when you're planning to go in and kill something and limiting the game's sauce potential, and I really do not like that TAGGING doesn't have a separate cooldown timer either. I could go on about other small issues but when it comes down to it the meter only being usable when full is the main thing that makes me not want to play anymore because I'm hindered from trying to figure out what impractical combos I can do during a run

edit: docked another .5 because the game literally refused to let me revive despite having 4x the needed money