izigame.me

Daybreak 2 is kind of a mixed bag depending on your expectations for what a sequel game in the series will/should do, but I think that aside from the story/general amount of progression in the plot it is a really good and fun game. Typically you expect Trails to go from setup game → payoff game, aside from the occasional epilogue game. The setup game introduces you to the setting and characters while mostly ignoring the overall Trails plot, and then the payoff game wraps up the localized plot of the setup game while progressing the overall Trails plot in a considerable way. DB1 was the setup game, however, DB2 is definitely not a payoff game, and only makes a relatively small progress to the overall plot.
In fact, it kind of actively kicks the can down the road by having setbacks in the plot (without getting into spoilers). While it isn't something that is necessarily forgiveable, and isn't something they should ever do again, it is at least understandable if you know the context of the game's development. In 2022, Ys X was meant to release for Ys's 35th anniversary. For whatever reason Ys was delayed for a year, and Falcom has to release a game every year due to founder/shareholder expectations. So sadly Trails got tapped into a rushed release that wasn't planned, skipping basically the entire preproduction phase and having an even shorter full production phase than the normal one year dev cycle they usually have. It's pretty obvious from the lack of new assets, locations, and skills in the game that it was impossible to continue the story as originally intended with this crunch deadline. So I do feel for the devs and even the writers this time, as it's not their fault, but ultimately the company is to blame here.
With a lot of the negativity and elephant in the room out of the way, I can get into the positives. One of my bigger issues with DB1 was the very rigid formulaic way its structure was set up, similar to the first 2 sky games and all of cold steel. DB2 definitely mixes the formula around a lot, with some segments starting you in the middle of action, some with a slow start, and some with just completely unique structure overall. I would like to see a less-formulaic structure used again in the future. Another thing is that you get to see a lot of characters (and even npcs) without the MC around for significant time. I really like this, and it is something that Cold Steel for example desperately needed but sorely lacked.
The combat I think got that nice bit of extra polish that puts it on par, or at least close, to Reverie in terms of overall fun. Sadly, there is still not much challenge even on higher difficulty (but this has really been true since Cold Steel). But everything flows so well, and a number of things like s-craft spam got balanced better. The control of the characters in the field combat feels better in general, improving the already good flow of action combat → break → turn based, from the first game. Especially Cross Strike adds to that feeling of flow, by allowing you to instantly change chars and strong attack after a perfect dodge. Other additions and new ideas like Quick Arts, EX Chain, and dual element arts add more choices or leave the possibility for new creative ideas to build off them in the future. Lastly, while the lack of new crafts/s-crafts and ESPECIALLY shard skills feels like a bit of a let down, at least they have the new spells, drivers, holo cores, and quartz.
Minigames are back, which I think is a good thing overall to give an option of other activities to mix up what the player is doing, even if you aren't a fan of them. I think the fishing is the best implementation of it overall in the series so far. It's relatively simple, but well executed. The hacking minigame I wasn't big on at the start, but I eventually liked it quite a lot. The stealth missions—I think they're unnecessary overall. But despite a bad first impression it wasn't very difficult or frustrating, and was just neutral. Basketball is very simplistic, but fine. Seven Hearts I think is relatively on par with Blade 1 in CS1. Not a lot of skill involved and will be boring to some people, but if you compare it to card games like war, go fish, old maid, or uno, it is fine enough.
There are some parts with connect events involving more than one character, and I think SO MUCH YES to this. Very good idea that mixes up the formula, and can allow for more nuanced/complex events in the future. In general the character interactions throughout the whole game are excellent as usual, and characters have decent, even if often somewhat subtle, progression. There is one section of the game where the characters are behaving kind of weird, but it is explained in the game, and I think goes along well with the 'truth vs falsity' theme of the Calvard arc in general. It did kind of get absurd at a point, but in the end they never crossed any of my personal lines like Cold Steel did over and over, so I came out the other end a lot happier than I expected. Also NPC enjoyers can rejoice. The first half of the game has pretty lackluster NPCs, due to how short you spend in the locations, but the second half has some of the best NPC arc continuations I can remember. I'm now interested in a number of NPCs that I didn't care for in the first game.
The Marchen Garten I don't think is as good as the True Reverie Corridor. But that is in equal parts because of the rushed development, and also that TRC was a way to unlock the side content—whereas MG *IS* the side content. It could have done with some more variety, but at the end of the day it is a nice QoL to be able to go and get more money or sepith—or just have some battles to mix things up—at almost any point you want.
Feels criminal to gloss over this, but I'm running out of space so I will quickly say that I liked DB1's music a lot. It's probably in my top 5 Trails games. But the music of DB2, man oh man, I will need like a year or two to look back on it and decide but it may be my favorite in the series. We're continuing the strong jazz theming, but a lot of songs have more energy—especially the main battle theme, which despite clearly building directly off the less memorable first game's main battle theme, is so incredibly good to me.
In the end, I want to say that despite the plot kind of kicking the can down the road, it does still progress the story forward some. It also answers several questions from the first game, does give some big reveals, and does leave you with a few new questions for the future. I hope that in the next game we will see a lot of the things pay off that we didnt even realize were set up here. But as it is, DB2 is still a fun game overall. I'd rank it about middle of the pack of all Trails games.