A weak follow-up that has some merits. TOS 1 is among my favorite games of all time and this isn't a great follow-up. It does try and continue some of the story, but the focus is entirely on the new characters. The new leads are alright, I like their lovey dovey relationship.

They added a new mechanic: collect monsters and train them to fight on your behalf. You can tell the entire game was built around this idea. Sadly, I hate it. The monsters aren't that helpful, and figuring out how to capture them took me my entire first play through.

The story is far too short and simple. You can play through most of it ln like ten hours. The over map is a real step down from the first, but its tolerable. There's a whole lot of side quest/tasks that you can use to fill time, but they all kinda suck. you can just rush through them and fight the final bosses. But then you get the final one of those quests, and there's just this dramatic up tilt in difficulty. That and the uber dungeon were the only things I didn't complete in this.

It has its moments, the leads are good. I like seeing the OG cast and getting to see what they've been doing. The Combat is as good the original, if you aren't using the monster. The story is interesting enough. Its a poor sequel, but its not a terrible game.

Worth a look if you like Tales games, but really not one to own.