Dusk Diver 2

DD2 took a lot of steps forward, but still has a couple bumps along the way. Visually and Performance wise, WOW! What a glow up! Smooth 60fps on max settings and visually upgraded everywhere! 1st impression was amazing once you get out of the tutorial. They tuned down the tankiness of boss enemies substantially (Thank God), but unfortunately they did not tune down the basic enemy encounters and you will have A LOT of them. I don't mind frequent encounters, I do not like each one taking over 5 minutes to get through. It almost feels like padding to extend the playtime. Unfortunately this has the same repetition problems as DD1. There's a traditional leveling system now, which I like, and armor you can wear to boost various stats. The exp pool is shared so you have to pick and choose who gets upgraded (You have a party of 4 now). I ended up only leveling Yumo to max level which then made the basic encounters go much more smoothly, and most importantly, quickly. You combo set does flow together better with the inclusion of skill moves, but it is still very minimum. It's still has the feeling of a Musou game but without the filler, hence that repetitious feeling. Another small gripe I have is the costumes. I love playing dress up in games but the options they have really don't make hunting them down worth it. All the dlc cosutmes should have been in the base game. There are 60+ costumes schematics you can find. ONLY 3 OF THEM ARE ACTUAL OUTFITS, and they are just recolored variants of your character's base fit. The rest are just simple accessories, (Tails, Glasses, Headsets). That was VERY disappointing and it felt like my time was wasted finding them as you have to re tread old areas you have visited. Which then means you are fighting all the basic encounters all over again. I'm someone who does not play games for the stories. If it's fun it's fun. DD2 did not change that at all. I tried paying attention but ultimately I ended up skipping all the dialogue. I also had a strange bug where no music played through my entire playthrough. Idk if this is a Windows 10 kinda deal (Thank you Michealsoft) but I played the whole game with just sounds effects and voice lines, which sucks because DD1 had some really good tracks! DD2 improves on DD1 in nearly every way. There's still issues with enemy tankiness, poor pacing, and a lack of a deep combat system, but I really enjoyed this game. I really hope DD3 improves on the foundation 2 has set, because to me this is slowly reaching "Hidden Gem" territory.