The first part of the game takes place at the same time as the previous disc, but from Chip's perspective. This adds a lot of context for his strained relationship with his family, where he can never please his father Swed no matter how hard he tries or even when he actually brings good results. It also shows that while he was hostile towards Sai in the previous game, his true feelings are a mix of admiration and jealousy. In the second half of the game, we get to see how he and the main villain, Axis, have a lot in common. As confident as they act, their desire for purpose works against them and makes them confused as to what they should be doing with their life. Axis himself seems like a generic destroyer villain at first, but if you beat all the Eater bosses, you get to see certain events from his perspective, showing that he couldn't deal with his inner conflict and had to separate his own memories to cope with it. Sai also gets an extended character arc where he has to go into his dreams and reexamine his relationships with his loved ones, including his dad, the previous game's final boss.


You start the game with Chip's team of agents, who feel weaker in many ways than the previous team because their abilities have fewer cheese strategies, though they still have some decent multis, and Chip/Ania's multis can quickly kill some of the endgame bosses with enough setup. However, Disc 2 didn't add as many new multis as I had hoped, and the rare spells and high-tier commands still don't have many multis to support them. As a result, I ended up cheesing the endgame and postgame with the Disc 1 team's tried-and-true breaker spam strat, which is even stronger than before thanks to Sai's new Cosmic trait. On the plus side, some of the new spells Oli can learn have good enough secondary effects that they don't need multis to be useful, especially the Vacuum spells that can stack with her stat down debuffs.

One thing that this game did rectify is giving the player a better way to avoid enemy encounters. If the player recruits Kwadle, they can give him the Repellant accessory to completely cancel random encounters, making it easier to search for secrets in old dungeons. This is definitely necessary because some of Solar Light puzzles can be very tricky unless you're good at recognizing circles.

For some reason, cutscenes will have everyone in the party present, but you can only swap out party members by talking to Joshua, which seems like strange design. It's probably to make team building more challenging when going into dungeons that require different tool skills, but it still seems odd. Maybe there should be a consumable item that allows you to change out party members without returning to Joshua, or allow swapping at vending machines?

The game has some collectibles based on the IRL date, including teachers for spells that Oli may have missed in Disc 1. Usually, I'm not too fond of overly complex calendar systems, but this is solely based on the days of the week, so it's not as overwhelming as a full year-long calendar full of specific events while still giving the player a reason to play a bit every day until they collect all the rewards.

8/10
I like Disc 2's character writing more, though my complaint about the redundancy of commands still stands, since there still aren't that many multis and the Disc 1 team's original meta strat is even more meta than before.

[h1]Chip On My Shoulder[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The first part of the game takes place at the same time as the previous disc, but from Chip's perspective. This adds a lot of context for his strained relationship with his family, where he can never please his father Swed no matter how hard he tries or even when he actually brings good results. It also shows that while he was hostile towards Sai in the previous game, his true feelings are a mix of admiration and jealousy. In the second half of the game, we get to see how he and the main villain, Axis, have a lot in common. As confident as they act, their desire for purpose works against them and makes them confused as to what they should be doing with their life. Axis himself seems like a generic destroyer villain at first, but if you beat all the Eater bosses, you get to see certain events from his perspective, showing that he couldn't deal with his inner conflict and had to separate his own memories to cope with it. Sai also gets an extended character arc where he has to go into his dreams and reexamine his relationships with his loved ones, including [spoiler]his dad, the previous game's final boss[/spoiler]. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] You start the game with Chip's team of agents, who feel weaker in many ways than the previous team because their abilities have fewer cheese strategies, though they still have some decent multis, and Chip/Ania's multis can quickly kill some of the endgame bosses with enough setup. However, Disc 2 didn't add as many new multis as I had hoped, and the rare spells and high-tier commands still don't have many multis to support them. As a result, I ended up cheesing the endgame and postgame with the Disc 1 team's tried-and-true breaker spam strat, which is even stronger than before thanks to Sai's new Cosmic trait. On the plus side, some of the new spells Oli can learn have good enough secondary effects that they don't need multis to be useful, especially the Vacuum spells that can stack with her stat down debuffs. One thing that this game did rectify is giving the player a better way to avoid enemy encounters. If the player recruits Kwadle, they can give him the Repellant accessory to completely cancel random encounters, making it easier to search for secrets in old dungeons. This is definitely necessary because some of Solar Light puzzles can be very tricky unless you're good at recognizing circles. For some reason, cutscenes will have everyone in the party present, but you can only swap out party members by talking to Joshua, which seems like strange design. It's probably to make team building more challenging when going into dungeons that require different tool skills, but it still seems odd. Maybe there should be a consumable item that allows you to change out party members without returning to Joshua, or allow swapping at vending machines? The game has some collectibles based on the IRL date, including teachers for spells that Oli may have missed in Disc 1. Usually, I'm not too fond of overly complex calendar systems, but this is solely based on the days of the week, so it's not as overwhelming as a full year-long calendar full of specific events while still giving the player a reason to play a bit every day until they collect all the rewards. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 8/10 I like Disc 2's character writing more, though my complaint about the redundancy of commands still stands, since there still aren't that many multis and the Disc 1 team's original meta strat is even more meta than before.