Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon

Speaking as someone who enjoyed the first game

My initial impressions of this game were mixed. The story feels like more of the same, with Aluche needing to defeat the Moon Queen or sacrifice the priestess. I did like how they invested more in cutscenes for some scenes, and the game's introduction is quite fun to play.

✦Combat:The combat animations are a bit slower compared to the first game, but you get used to it as you keep playing (though I still prefer the first one in this regard). Despite the slower combat, they compensated with the addition of various combos, interactions with your partners for combo attacks, and the ability to switch weapons using the Servans with that function, which allows you to customize gameplay.

✦Bosses:The bosses are much more creative since they tried to introduce some puzzles during the fights, which gave the battles more personality, considering the first game was more straightforward (go to a place, hit the boss until it dies).

✦World:I believe the exploration has improved significantly compared to the first game. They enhanced the map, and now you have reasons to choose specific Servans when you set out to explore since there are obstacles that require certain Servans to overcome, which is quite interesting.

✦Music: The music in the game is great, but unfortunately, not all tracks are as memorable as those from the first game, as they don't match my style as much. The soundtrack from the first game was all epic, fast-paced, and immersive, while the music in this game is nice but, in my opinion, has a few forgettable tracks.

✦Final Thoughts:Even though the game mechanics are cool, I feel it's a bit limited. In the first game, you could choose up to 4 Servans to accompany you, and they had unique and useful abilities for any playstyle, and combining their abilities was one of the strongest aspects of the game. In the second game, although there are puzzles and more uses for the Servans, I find the combat a bit monotonous because it doesn't allow you to mix the powers well to create interesting combos without having to stop and summon the Servans (and when combined with the slower attack animations, it creates a break in the pacing that bothers me a bit).

The game gives you hints about the story details without directly telling you what happened in the game's world (through character affinities and the DLC story, which adds motivation for the main villain and the context before the protagonist fights her), which is cool but also forces you to play through it all to get a full understanding.

I think it's a great game if you consider picking it up on sale and playing without high expectations—you might have fun. But since you need the context from the first game to fully understand this one (as there are many references to the first game), it's better to buy the first one, which remains my favorite."

Severe issues of note: crashes at unpredictable moments (2 times in 12 hours, 2 other long freezes/hitches)
Disclaimer: normally I'd try to 100% a game before doing a 'review' but in this case some issues were so severe think it's worth going over, apologies in advance for a more 'partial' review.

Positives:

+ Whoever sculpted Camilla's left leg and put her in an asymmetrical bikini needs a raise.
+ Okay being a bit more sensible yes many of the heroines are very pretty and you unlock bikinis for them early on if that's your thing... if that sounds like "this isn't a yuri game but instead an action game with some T&A" - we'll get back to that later.
+ Combat targeting system is actually very good especially by action-game standards, camera and character control in general is very solid this time.

Neutrals:

* Lilly system (can take your chosen girl into stage with you) can lead to some sweet in-stage dialogue and contextual actions. Each grants their own special bonuses and do vary game-flow quite a lot at times. They take up a Servan slot and repeat same dialogue WAY too much hence not a 'positive'
* Servans now take a back-seat story wise so they feel much more 'just there' than in the 1st game. The advantage of this is more time for the Lily characters so can be good, bad or neutral.
* Can change difficulty anytime and the difference between Easy and Normal is HUGE, normal is still easy but bosses can be moderately tough (you at least have to dodge some attacks), a "Game Journalist" difficulty option would actually slot in between these 2 options if you can believe that.
* Exploration is now 1-and-done unlike the 1st game, if you unlock a chest or stage hazard it's permanently unlocked. This does take away item RNG but also means exploration/variation in dungeon approach is not a thing on replays.

Negatives:

I was going to save this for later but to be clear Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns is genuinely my favourite JRPG period, a straight 10/10, so I was completely 'down with' the time mechanics of this game... if they were done well. Heck I also really liked Atelier Rorona so promise this isn't me just screaming into the void, I was up for what this game is but how it is put together is all kinds of wrong.

- Hard crashed twice in 12 hours, once talking to NPC in Hotel and another time after about 10 minutes in a dungeon. Additionally had 2 long freezes that felt very dicey.
- Pointless skill tree, NoA 1 had just 11 levels which meant each level up had an impact and so did equipment, in this game you have far more levels and a skill tree and at best using multiple levels-worth of skill point you can upgrade 1 single skill by up-to 8%... 8... percent. This means in theory if you maxed out the entire skill tree you'd maybe, and I mean 'maybe' have a 15-20% overall stat advantage over not touching it.
- Red door rooms(have to defeat all enemies to progress) galore later on, but it's worse, they have spawn waves so you can clear out the enemies and another 1 or 2(!) waves can spawn in sequentially. Additionally some level design allows for level skips such as flying to higher heights with the correct Servan... but red-door rooms block this too.
- Combat is Dynasty Warriors but worse in every way, mashing Square (for us PS controller users) is actually the most viable way to play. Worse is everything that layers on-top of it is near-mandatory 'do as the devs tell you', various bars fill up for skills that are only viable on bosses/high HP foes and some are time sensitive so you either do or lose it. Oh but it gets worse, weapons are now tied to Servans so you only have 1 weapon unless you take up 1 of your 2 Servan slots for a weapon Servan... meaning max weapon count is 3, speaking of Servans...
- Servans have become contextual and useless, there are 4 used to open up dungeon locations, but can only have 2 at a time so have to clear dungeons at least twice with 2 pairs of these 4 Servans which then means no access to Servans actually want to use. They also do far less damage than in the 1st game and whether they do anything when you press their button (L/R Bumpers) is often hard to tell.
- Extreme time wasting can occur due to quest/time-limit system. You can do a dungeon run and only afterwards realise you did it wrong and have to reboot old save. For example: Clearing quest unlocks new quest only on dungeon exit, this means you can think you've wrapped up everything in-time only to find out you've got more to do and may not have enough Moon-light(missions before game-over) to do so. This can, unlike the 1st game, mean you can permanently miss out on content and near-mandates a 100% play-through on NG+. To really drive this point home, at the location you can save/load your files there's a 3rd option: "Restart this chapter from the beginning" which does indeed wipe all your progress since chapter start, just embarrassing that the game needs that as a fail safe.
- How is the quest system WORSE that the 1st game? It just dumps them on you at chapter start and makes them more mandatory than before (well, if you're here for the yuri anyhow).
- I'll be real, I don't care for 'yuri' but even then I can tell the cast of "waifus" feels totally off, in fact the fact I think of them as "waifus" is the problem. There are too many love interests and each sticks to one trope and by God do they make love to it, there's the "I'm the shy childhood friend" and the "I'm the goofy greedy shop keeper" and the "I love you but don't want to admit it" and even the "No one has ever loved me before but because you were 1st person to be nice to me I'm yours forever!" character that you'll find in just about every harem/diet-weeb anime/game you can think of.
- Can't believe I'm saying this but, music, the music's bad, well it's not bad it's more decent for short bursts... but it's all experimental 'background' noise that plays for 10-15 minutes at a time without any deviation so becomes grating. There's also a severe lack of variety so that peppy hotel lobby theme will play during cut-scenes whether happy, sad, contains a story twist or mystery or anything in-between.
- Graphics have major pop-in issues especially of post-processing effects for mid-distance geometry, can be very distracting. Additionally many different dungeons use the same effects so can blend in together and colour correction can be quite ugly at times.
- Level inter-connectivity from the 1st game is just gone. Can no longer move between levels freely and must reset to the hotel and sacrifice Moon-light every time want to switch level.


To wrap-up I don't want to be 'that guy' who is hyper critical as I wanted to like this game and you can see genuine thought and effort put into it, but after 12 hours stuck in red-room purgatory... I mean er chapter 6 having a choice to restart the whole chapter as I accidentally killed a boss I was supposed to recruit by doing a side-quest before hand and all I could think was "the uninstall button is also an option". I don't mind games being very simple and somewhat lacking, perhaps having to make up excuses for some blatant short-comings (heck my appreciation Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns is defined by them) but this game just feels like an obligation.

Did they want to make a yuri game? The generic anime harem makes me doubt it.
Did they capatalise on their unique features such as Servan system? Given that's been cut in half, cut from the plot and simplified certainly not.
Is Nights of Azure 2 what it says on the tin? Absolutely not, it's a harem T&A arena combat game which I often like, but not this time.

TL:DR Gust snubbed Yuri/NoA1 fans for Senran Kagura fans.

A simple and somewhat grindy, but thoroughly enjoyable ARPG. Lots of callbacks to the first game, so worth playing that first.

Very disappointing not to have seen a third in this series.

(Yes, the DLC is worth paying for - it's essentially cut content, but cut content you won't want to miss.)