Before starting I should say I adore Lisa the painful and I love Buddy as a character, but with that being said I was super disappointed coming off the incredible ending of painful and coming into this. The combat could have taken the oppertunity to be even more brutal than the original since you have much less lenience with how you use your turn, but the lack of allies means battles rarely have stakes and the game practically forces you into using joy which trivializes combat for the majority of the game. I enjoy the story when it's about Buddy attempting to kill every leader in the wasteland and gradually becoming more monstrous and more like what brad became, but the ending decides we need to take a hard left turn into the lore of the wasteland and why things are the way they are which frankly aren't needed and replace the mystique of the setting with a little more disappointment. Ultimately, it feels like an expansion made more out of obligation than an actual desire to create it.