Picked this one up for $10 off ebay. Really loved XC1, and this is the same, but a bit different. I don't remember the "anime" feeling being so strong in that one, but it did have its cheesy anime acting - just no anime tiddies or anime emotes. It has its fair share of obnoxious, redundant phrases, "Dunban!" will forever scar my mind, as I'm sure some of the phrases in this game will.
Also, what is it with Nintendo RPG's since the Wii? They have quirkiness not really present in other RPG's. There's also an annoyance and nuance to the combat. It's slow, involved, simple at the core, extremely complicated once fully developed. I remember fighting a later boss in XC1 where I had basically overleveled the shit out of my characters, thus never utilized the combo system, which this boss requires to break down its shields, so the fight took like 20 minutes peeling off the boss's hit points. Did a quick Google, figured out what I'd not been doing, and even regular fights went 10x faster (woops).
That said, it is definitely a game you can't skip the tutorial on, and coming back to it after a break would be incredibly challenging.
I'd much prefer a Last Story 2, as I much preferred that method of active combat a bit more, not the passive turn based'ish of XC.
With the quirkiness, depth of combat and character development, interesting characters, deep story.... It's what's missing from a lot of wrpg's. We'll see if it holds my attention with the obnoxious anime flavor on things.
