A huge upgrade from the original. At first I was not too sold on the new voice actors but by the end I was blown away. The new additions such as hangouts and more character moments added to what I had already felt was a complete game back in the original. OST is fantastic and I cannot tell you how much I enjoy just walking around in game listening to it. Other quality of life changes added as well make the game less frustrating in certain aspects, such as being able to reenter the dorm without time passing after accidentally leaving it. A fantastic story that I think everyone should experience at least once.

Now if you are looking for a challenge you will NOT find it here, unless you are playing on merciless. The difficulty of this game gets extremely easy past level 11 and the removal of systems such as fatigue, the addition of the great clock , theurgies and twilight fragments, while making tartarus less of a hassle, does also trivialize it at times. Of course there is the occasional ambush or crit into getting one shot but the game offers many teleporters to save regularly should this happen. The final boss is also unfortunately a joke outside of merciless or if you are even slightly overleveled. At the very minimum, I do appreciate how the secret boss is still as difficult as they were in the original.

Enjoyable experience if willing to put in the hours. On first run I was too focused on leveling up and spent a lot of time in rune farming locations instead of just enjoying the game normally, which led to me having a mixed review by the end. On second run however, I decided to play the game normally and found myself enjoying it a lot more, taking in the scenery and enjoying the process of learning how to defeat each enemy. That said, perhaps it is skill issue on my part, but the final boss and Malenia are some of the least enjoyable boss fights I have had in a while. Malenia healing through even shields makes the experience more tedious than satisfying and I swear it was intended for Torrent to be used in the final fight. A great experience overall.