Much of my review for the first episode applies to Episode 2 - except with some critical changes, most of which are not to the better.
Firstly the Quick-Time-Events for the special attacks are a little harder (especially on the top tier attacks), which in itself is fine, but the game does encourage you to use them for kills in order to maximise your damage.
Secondly, more of the enemies are resistant to either your special attacks, or to specific characters - making much more of combat a tedious waiting game (while in Episode 1 you might want for the devastating final attack, in Episode 2 you wait for an ability to inflict any real damage...).
Thirdly, the nature of the episodic game means that the characters you built development from the first game are lost. The game is perfectly playable either as a sequel (with imported character) or as a straight new game (without), but in order to ensure that both states are possible, the game replaces all characters weapons and effectively wipes the slate clean in stats.
These changes are a crying shame, as the story from the first episode continues, develops, and I think is told in a slightly tighter way in Episode 2. Better yet, items you collected in the first game become useful during the course of this one (presumably available irrespective of whether you loaded an Episode 1 save), and the combined games do tell a great tale.
Unfortunately, I'm writing this fresh after finishing the game, and the final change is a doozy:
The final boss is disappointing to say the least. Without spoiling it, both games lead you to expect an epic final battle here, and you start it in a standard epic RPG boss fight style (in much the same way as the first episode's final bossfight). However, after you deal about 10% damage, the game says 'no that would be boring, here's a simple 3 button puzzle instead'. It's frustrating because i went out of my way in the last few fights to ensure I had maximum damage on my characters (via collecting the damage boost from finishing enemies with special attacks) and all my weapons were levelled, only to be effectively railroaded into a near-cutscene ending. What really makes it upsetting is that the intent is good - mixing up the final boss combat is a genuinely good idea, and there's intermediate bosses earlier on for whom this works well, but the resulting fight is frankly boring - it's literally just 'guess the right order for these three buttons' with about 20 attempts (more if you've mastered blocking).
Were this the last game in the series, I'd probably be upset, but (seeing as i played the 3rd game before 1 and 2) I know that the story continues and the gameplay in at least the 3rd game is significantly improved. Fortunately though, the clear weaknesses of the first 2 games were understood and recognised, and did not translate into the subsequent game (it may have played into the decision to change developers and style of game for the latter two parts, or it might just be coincidence, but either way the result is much improved).
Overall, as with Episode 1, the game is good, and the story it is telling is interesting, witty and enjoyable. I just wish that these first two episodes were a bit higher paced, and that they could have matched the brilliance of the 3rd episode that followed.
Recommended if you want to follow the saga: while Episode 3 didn't NEED these two episodes to follow, they certainly help. In isolation though (and absent the wider story arc), this isn't anything too special, and i'm not sure I'd strongly recommend it on its own merits, certainly not ahead of Episode 3, or for context, even Episode 1.
