Or as I like to call it "Padding the Game." I enjoy it and the good moments outweigh the bad for me. But there just felt like there was way too much unnecessary padding including: - The random blade rng - being forced to wait for merc missions on a timer - fewer quests but feeling incredibly bloated with tasks and backtracking - Blade field checks forcing you to grind said blade rng on top of grinding affinity charts to get higher levels for only a couple of random field checks in missions -enemies having absurdly high hp and making most early to mid-game fights feel like they take longer than they should. -purposely limiting or making you walk longer distances between warp points and some places that just lack warp points and probably should have them. -gormot field..........just gormot field is one of the worst/overly complicated/tedious to travel open areas I've ever explored in a jrpg. This is only impacted by how confusing the quest markers get and one of the worst map designs I've ever used. You will just not make any sense from reading this area's map. This is one of the first areas in the game by the way. Thankfully it gets better, but still -even the final boss is padded cause you spend half the fight with the dude running away and you cant hit him with close-range attacks. Note: don't try to set up orb full burst combos during his first 20-30% of health you damage. It goes to a cutscene and resets the entire orb chain for no real reason (thanks game) once you get a team and get into the swing of inflicting full burst orb chain attacks. It is honestly a really satisfying experience. But the first half kinda feels like a slog because you will more than likely not have all the tools to do this consistently. Everything else is great or passable. Music is always good, no surprise there. Area design seems to repeat a lot of themes of xeno 1 but they are still nice to look at. The story is passable but not as many twists and turns as the first game. Once you are told the main villain, that's it. More simplistic but that's not a bad thing for me. Voice acting is hit or miss. A lot more hokey line deliveries but most times it is a "so bad it's good" sort of thing. So yeah, it's enjoyable but has plenty of frustrating aspects that put down below the first one in my personal preference.