The number of people who don't know better that are about to be naively lead into getting fucked over depresses the fuck out of me.

Also the last fight should have just been Jenova, what an overly long dumb cluster fuck.

Just finished. Overall a great experience with a lot of annoying padding. The last chapter was schizophrenic and I can get why people don't like it. I think I know what they are doing so I will continue to reserve judgement into part 3.

As much as I like the combat when it's bosses, readability in multi enemy fights is still dog like remake was. Fuck flying enemies. That said, despite my complaints, it is still an improvement over part 1 in almost every way.

Every time I interact with a map object Chadley needs me to stop everything to say one sentence to me and then I have recovery for a few seconds before I can move again once he stops talking. Lots of tiny little padding that makes the game feel more sluggish than it needs to when hiding loading.

But holy shit is it over animated in a lot of spots. Too many actions have hella recovery frames where in a vacuum it's fine, but it starts to pile up when doing things repeatedly. Why do I need to watch a near 15 second sitting animation at benches?

I would simply aoe grind all of the barrens and this would all be avoided.

There are also several characters that are straight furry bait. That is off putting as hell to a lot of players.

It is often compared to Sekiro because of the parry mechanic, but it fails to give that VISCERAL feeling when hitting perfect parries. Sekiro can have insanely quick fights due to this, where both you or the boss can die super quick. 9S only does the player dying quick portion.

It is very well put together, actually tells a decent story in a metroidvania, and has a banger OST. However, the exploration is nothing special and the power ups are bog standard to boring. The bosses are where is shines and even there, they are sponges even using optimal talisman setups.