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Whether you like Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom comes from how you approach it. If you come in expecting more of Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, you'll be disappointed as very little aside from some art styles and a few parts of the world are the same. If you approach it as its own game with tenuous ties to the original, you may enjoy it better.
This is a full action RPG rather than the hybrid turn based active battle system that the first game did. You have AI controlled characters, and this time the AI uses them pretty effectively. You have MP, but it is pretty limited and you will need to do melee attacks to regenerate your MP. Your weapon skills can be pretty strong, but you can only use them once, maybe twice in trash fights and sparingly in bosses. Magic is sadly weaker than in the first game due to the MP system. You also have access to a dodge roll, and positioning is quite important. The golden glim returns, this time it lets you do more damage and have infinite MP for a time. It's quite amazing with Tani and her arrow rain skill, or Evan and some of his late game potent spells.
Characterization is OK, a few characters have a lot of development but others are just kind of there. The overall story isn't quite as good as the first game, and unlike the very threatening present of Shadar in NnK1, the villain here is not as visible. While I wasn't fond of Drippy from NnK1, he at least has a personality; your fairy companion Lofty has barely any characterization.
Artwise it's a mixed bag. The character art and cutscenes are the same gorgeous Ghibli inspired fare you expect. The terrain is more realistic, which doesn't mesh well with the character art. Finally, the world map and the skirmishes use plastic toy like chibi characters which are just not my style.
Animations, with one glaring exception, are also great. The characters have great motion and feel. The exception is that when you jump or dodge roll as Tani, you get a flash of her panties. Tani can't be more than 12, just why did you think this was OK, especially with Ghibli doing the art and animation?
Environments and level design are also mixed. Some areas look great, and main story dungeons are also great and complex. Optional areas however do not have a lot of variety. You'll see a lot of the same reused rooms, corridors, and caves. It can also be hard to find some of the areas on the world map, they're not always well distinguished from the decorations.
The rest of the game is mixed too, there seems to be so many competing factors and aspects. The main action RPG segment is great. There's a large town building aspect which I find quite good. Next, there is a skirmish mass combat aspect, with its own separate exp system. Some optional dungeons are randomized. Finally there's a crafting system. Like NnK1, there's a creature collection system but it works differently.
The town building is one aspect I quite love. You obtain citizens for your kingdom via the story or by doing sidequests, and these citizens can be put to work at buildings in your kingdom. They can collect crafting resources, perform research that unlocks more crafting options or give you permanent boosts, and gradually level up over time. There are a large number of buildings, and upgrading and staffing the right ones can give you a number of rare crafting ingredients for crafting, creating higgledies, upgrading spells, or doing sidequests. It's quite fun to manage, and you have easy teleport access to the city so it's easy to pop in, do some upgrades and start some research, then go back to progressing sidequests or the main story. Do not neglect the city building aspect is there will be required upgrades you have to do!
The skirmishes are mass combat, where you control up to 4 units that can rotate around you. Three of them, hammer, spear, and sword are in a wheel where one beats another while is beaten by the third. Then there's archery/spells that have no strength or weakness. You will eventually earn more units, each with their own passive abilities and active skills. Generally though, active skills aren't worth the expense and you're usually better off just using the military power resource to restore your units power as they're beaten down. Skirmishes have their own experience and level system, totally separate from your character levels. It can be difficult, especially early, as there aren't many ways to level up to have a chance. The good thing is that even if you lose a skirmish (and the game over screen pops up), you actually don't lose anything (unless you spent kingdom currency on bolstering) and keep whatever xp is earned! You can just slowly beat yourself against a difficult skirmish and you'll eventually get enough xp and power to win. I didn't enjoy the skirmishes much, but it's something you will have to power through. Do not neglect skirmishes as there are required ones during the story!
Crafting is better than NNK1, but still not enjoyable. There are a number of crafting options that aren't really connected to one another (except all being unlocked through your city building aspect of the game), so it can feel a bit disjointed. Some of the top end gear requires grinding a lot of ingredients from an end-game randomized dungeon, adding a lot of false longevity (both the grind and the horrible randomness).
As for weapons, you'll find most of the weapons and you'll generally only craft when you're drowning in high end materials. Each character can equip 3 melee weapons and one ranged weapon, and there are three types of weapons (swords, axes/hammers, and spears). Two characters can equip each type of weapon, so it's a good idea to only have one wielder in your party so you don't have two characters competing for the same one. Unlike NnK1, you CAN swap Evan out of the party, and it may be a good idea to do so until he gets stronger as he levels up (and swapped out characters gain XP just fine). Evan gets very high stats later on, but in the early to even mid game he's on the weak side.
The creature collection this time are higgledies, these are up to 4 little minions that appear in battle with you, They'll do some minor attacks or skills (like minor healing) and occasionally show a circle. If you enter the circle and activate it, they'll use their active skill. These can range from a healing field (useful), to spawning a cannon, to dropping a hammer with a decent chance to interrupt, summoning a knight to fight with you, or doing a high damage gravity field (very useful and you get access to a higgledy with this early!). These can be leveled up with crafting too.
Overall I did enjoy it, it's not quite as good of a story as Wrath of the White Witch, but it's a decent game set in the same universe. I do wish it was more focused, I think it just tried to do too much. Just the action RPG and the city builder, or just the action RPG and the skirmishes would have been a lot better. With the resources spread out so much, I feel that too many aspects weren't explored enough. Worth it on sale if you like jRPG's, just don't expect more of NnK1.