My first impression of The Joyful is that it was a very short, very frustrating, and very disappointing as an epilogue. The second time around I appreciated the ways that it mixes up the gameplay formula more, but the package still feels flawed.

The game scales back a lot of the RPG elements of The Painful in favor of a more cinematic experience, but this is really a good thing because it plays to the game's strengths. The epilogue of this story plays out in a really satisfying way and there's some great and memorable moments. There's almost no random encounters so the story proceeds at a great pace. The humor in this is dialed back considerably compared to The Painful, but the story is still satisfying.

The additions for the Definitive Edition make this much, much more palatable than in the original release, but I still found that there were some difficulty balancing issues. Battles seem to take forever even once you get the hang of landing the critical strikes. I ended up turning on Painless Mode because the fights were far too long and repetitive at the normal difficulty. The fact that this game is only 2-3 hours long tells you just how bad the combat was.