It was really wishy washy on its goal of trying to make things enjoyable as a sequel and as a standalone. It kind of failed on avoiding spoilers for the first game because they ended up showing things (and people) in this game anyways, but it was vague enough about what it used that if you did play the first game you might get frustrated (like me) when they tried to hand wave inconsistencies and not explain them properly. The prototype psync machine, Date’s face being changed back to Saito, and the found family message being kinda messed up with Mizuki were the big problems I had with this game.

You go through ai 1 and Date ends it with “this is my real face and it doesn’t matter how I look or sound, I’m still me and I know everyone will accept me” and then they just throw that away here…. Like… come on… The prototype psync machine requires your left eye to be ripped out when you use it so when they used it in this game with no negative repercussions I was like…bruh… the spoiler toggle mode didn’t do anything to help it either, they could’ve given Date a single line saying “yeah Pewter came by and fixed this btw so your eye will be fine” and it would’ve solved that… Also, the attempt at making Mizuki’s parents adoptive so that she could have her super strength connected to and explained by this game was kind of lame. They tried to have a few lines to handwave comments about Mizuki being birthed by Shoko but it just came across as sloppy retconning. They tried to make Mizuki have Adoption Angst™️, where she was sad about her parents not being her “real parents” when she had her whole thing in the previous game with Date being that they come to accept and care about each other like family and it felt kind of cheap. I think they could have found a way for Mizuki be experimented on while still having her birth parents be her birth parents but they didn’t really think it through enough.

It kind of felt like they didn’t care about continuity? I still had a lot of fun playing it, like it was very fun, but this game made me realize that maybe Uchikoshi and his teams should not be making games that are connected to each other too much if they’re going to forget stuff or just write off character development for the sake of maintaining status quo.

My gripes with it as a sequel aside, I felt like there was wasted potential with characters and the storyline. I didn’t like what they did with Gen honestly, I thought they handled that kind of awkwardly so I was confused and couldn’t take his development seriously. Like I thought he and Amame were gonna be a cute father daughter thing as another “family is who you choose” pair and then when they revealed that he was into her I was weirded out the whole time. His death scene on his route was supposed to be sad but I was laughing a bit because of everything happening. Also, I thought he and Ota were going to have some kind of character development where Gen realizes he’s being kind of rude about him, and Ota manages to prove himself to Gen and they respect each other as people? That was something Ota mentions he wanted to do and it seemed important enough for the game to point out a few times, but they never do anything about that? It felt kind of unfinished there tbh. Mizuki and Bibi also literally looking and acting the exact same was kind of dumb to me, and while I do like them both as characters I think it’s really cheap that the twist with them worked because they were being lazy with writing Bibi as her own character. Kinda weird nobody commented on them looking the same outside of Date too? Like Lien didn’t go “hey you look and sound and act exactly like my pal Quartz!” To Mizuki at any point. Kizuna did vaguely but Mizuki and Bibi are literally written to be interchangeable, so I don’t get why she didn’t say anything more. Also I think the culprit was handled kinda lamely? I knew Tearer wasn’t going to be anybody from the main cast and his motivation felt weak to me. I think Ryuki is fine as a character but I feel like he was underutilized? I was hoping to go back to his perspective eventually but that never happened.

I kind of hated that Mama was unironically used to break the fourth wall and reveal the timeline twist to us. Her telling the player hints on where to go already felt like a poor excuse for pushing the plot along, but if she really actually could just communicate with higher beings it just feels like cheating. At that point just tell us the culprit lmao

As for things I liked, I think Tokiko herself was very cool and I wish she was the main villain and that the game focused on her more? Her nil code ending was really neat. Amame was also really cool, I loved her and I think her story was very good and tragic. Definitely the highlight for me. I really liked how her actions were kind of received mixed by everyone in game. I liked Kizuna and Lien’s relationship in game as well, I was put off by it at first but I realized they were trying to make them have a relationship that resembled fairytale romances where the pair falls in love at first sight, so I tried to give them a little more slack there. After the timeskip they made it really cute too, with Lien trying his best to support Kizuna emotionally and physically at times. Mizuki getting them together was incredibly satisfying to me, and I thought it was very sweet. Also, while the timeline twist was neat, I think it could have been so much cooler if they had shown the twist through Ryuki’s point of view somehow, like if he got the times mixed up and we saw Tama or Boss or Date have to explain it properly to him or something. I liked most of the characters interactions with each other, getting to see Mizuki and Aiba was a lot of fun (even tho it was Bibi, but they’re interchangeable so it’s okay right?) and Tama and Ryuki were also entertaining to see. I hope Marco gets to have a personality and talk if there’s ever a third game. The somniums were very fun and I liked them a lot, I feel like a lot of them were better than the first game’s. Bibi’s and the Kusemon Go somnium were my favorites; I liked the story in Bibi’s and Kusemon was just so silly. I was also very pleased to see the grand finale being a thing in this game too, with everyone singing and dancing to half to whole. Who doesn’t love a big musical number?

This wasn’t the sequel I was hoping for, but I was still kind of happy to have this to play. It was fun to let myself get swept up by the mostly charming cast, fun gameplay, and theorize about everything, even if I was disappointed by a number of things. I enjoyed this game and despite its flaws I do hope for a third game.