Standalone game? or sequel dependent on having played prior game?
Honestly, it's not a true sequel more like a shitty knock off sequel, where you might see the same models but the characters are clearly no longer the same people also a lot of the original game's narrative is undermined for the sake of this game. I know this since I ended up playing the original partway through my first playthrough, I did it because due to how this game is written, it just doesn't really feel like it works as a standalone game at all, (I'd avoided the original due to the false no sexual content tag it has, fwi: it has basically the same amount of h-art as this game, and it actually builds up the relationships and leads upto the scenes instead of just arbitrarily cockblocking you all game and then just suddenly giving you a completely arbitrary and unsatisfying scene cause what the heck it's the end of the world may as well fuck around when you should be on high alert)
And was shocked to discover that the original was actually pretty decent and that the issue with this game isn't that your missing a ton of context from the original, the writing is just super awkward and non sequitur in this series as a whole, jumping from interesting on paper set piece to interesting on paper set piece, but unlike in the first game where it'd totally just glosses over the fact that some stuff just doesn't make sense for the sake of just straight up delivering on the promised semi-interesting developments, and fleshing out a decent setting with interesting characters and respecting your decisions. This game at first tries to gaslight you in regards to events in the game, then turns towards preaching at you CONSTANTLY in order to distract you with unnecessary inane babble, but after a while it just straight up stops pretending to care about the world/characters and turns into non-stop preaching with just a light bit of gaslighting about politics all the way through the rest of the game.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay it looks better than the original but it plays way worse, combat isn't necessarily bad but it's super clunky and slow paced, also there are way too many fights especially in the later portion of the game.
H-content
You get a single image for whatever partner you chose near the end, no real build up and completely unsatisfying. Oh, and you need version v1.0.11 because version v1.0.10 has a bug that doesn't let you see
Story
All your achievements from the prior game are undermined for the sake of unnecessary stupid conflict, it's acknowledged in game that the actions of the character that does it are unnecessary and stupid, then suddenly the world ends, "cause plot", and you have to escape the planet, you get away no matter what so long as you don't lose any of the arbitrary fights or fail to meet deadlines.
There's no grey morality in this game, there's preaching about what's righteous and how awful the bad guy is cause he's the bad guy and not really interested in doing favors for his enemies(those not aligned with the empire), like literally everyone else but let's ignore that part, also how he's the only one that isn't actively trying to kill you when unprovoked, cause his bad actions must be highlighted whilst we gloss over the bad actions of the other factions. No matter what you will face off at the end and if you choose to escape without aligning with any faction as a forceful group, you get a disgusting ending where the characters you've been following turn into pieces of shit, that murder their own because they made a judgement call to save the group, specifically the player character is the one that murders them, but the whole group becomes massive hypocritical pieces of shit that cry cause poor them, they feel bad for killing an innocent girl that just saved them, for the crime of trying to defend them and then trying to defend herself from them attacking her over it, thing is if she wanted to she could've easily killed them all instead, they killed her for no reason and she let them cause she was sad and didn't want to actually hurt them at most she was trying to suppress the guy trying to suppress her. Background: Ordinarily she was too afraid to defend herself because her psionics would make her experience all the pain and suffering that others do thanks to her proximity senses, but in this instance she deflects an attack shot at the group from space(a ridiculous distance) expecting that she was sacrificing herself, but when she expresses that she's fine her psionics didn't make her feel the pain she's murdered by the group, so that they can grandstand and give a speech lecturing her in her dying moments, about how evil she is for making the judgement call. All of the endings center around delivering some bad tasteless speech, not all of them are this blatant though, and yet more stupid unnecessary political preaching.
Honestly, it's not a true sequel more like a shitty knock off sequel, where you might see the same models but the characters are clearly no longer the same people also a lot of the original game's narrative is undermined for the sake of this game. I know this since I ended up playing the original partway through my first playthrough, I did it because due to how this game is written, it just doesn't really feel like it works as a standalone game at all, (I'd avoided the original due to the false no sexual content tag it has, fwi: it has basically the same amount of h-art as this game, and it actually builds up the relationships and leads upto the scenes instead of just arbitrarily cockblocking you all game and then just suddenly giving you a completely arbitrary and unsatisfying scene cause what the heck it's the end of the world may as well fuck around when you should be on high alert)
And was shocked to discover that the original was actually pretty decent and that the issue with this game isn't that your missing a ton of context from the original, the writing is just super awkward and non sequitur in this series as a whole, jumping from interesting on paper set piece to interesting on paper set piece, but unlike in the first game where it'd totally just glosses over the fact that some stuff just doesn't make sense for the sake of just straight up delivering on the promised semi-interesting developments, and fleshing out a decent setting with interesting characters and respecting your decisions. This game at first tries to gaslight you in regards to events in the game, then turns towards preaching at you CONSTANTLY in order to distract you with unnecessary inane babble, but after a while it just straight up stops pretending to care about the world/characters and turns into non-stop preaching with just a light bit of gaslighting about politics all the way through the rest of the game.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay it looks better than the original but it plays way worse, combat isn't necessarily bad but it's super clunky and slow paced, also there are way too many fights especially in the later portion of the game.
H-content
You get a single image for whatever partner you chose near the end, no real build up and completely unsatisfying. Oh, and you need version v1.0.11 because version v1.0.10 has a bug that doesn't let you see
Story
All your achievements from the prior game are undermined for the sake of unnecessary stupid conflict, it's acknowledged in game that the actions of the character that does it are unnecessary and stupid, then suddenly the world ends, "cause plot", and you have to escape the planet, you get away no matter what so long as you don't lose any of the arbitrary fights or fail to meet deadlines.
There's no grey morality in this game, there's preaching about what's righteous and how awful the bad guy is cause he's the bad guy and not really interested in doing favors for his enemies(those not aligned with the empire), like literally everyone else but let's ignore that part, also how he's the only one that isn't actively trying to kill you when unprovoked, cause his bad actions must be highlighted whilst we gloss over the bad actions of the other factions. No matter what you will face off at the end and if you choose to escape without aligning with any faction as a forceful group, you get a disgusting ending where the characters you've been following turn into pieces of shit, that murder their own because they made a judgement call to save the group, specifically the player character is the one that murders them, but the whole group becomes massive hypocritical pieces of shit that cry cause poor them, they feel bad for killing an innocent girl that just saved them, for the crime of trying to defend them and then trying to defend herself from them attacking her over it, thing is if she wanted to she could've easily killed them all instead, they killed her for no reason and she let them cause she was sad and didn't want to actually hurt them at most she was trying to suppress the guy trying to suppress her. Background: Ordinarily she was too afraid to defend herself because her psionics would make her experience all the pain and suffering that others do thanks to her proximity senses, but in this instance she deflects an attack shot at the group from space(a ridiculous distance) expecting that she was sacrificing herself, but when she expresses that she's fine her psionics didn't make her feel the pain she's murdered by the group, so that they can grandstand and give a speech lecturing her in her dying moments, about how evil she is for making the judgement call. All of the endings center around delivering some bad tasteless speech, not all of them are this blatant though, and yet more stupid unnecessary political preaching.
