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Gaming Nirvana
As for the audiovisual element, DDS2's graphics and visual design continues to set a perfect atmosphere, ranging from bright and sterile lab offices to disturbing glimpses into the mind of a being gone mad. (The final dungeon, in particular, deserves special note for being exceptionally beautiful.) The music is also a marked improvement over the first game, with more of a fast-paced, upbeat tempo all around. It's much more pleasant to listen to on its own and doesn't grow stale too quickly. (If your retailer still has some of the preorder soundtracks, be sure to ask for one!)
Finally, the story takes some intriguing new turns, integrating some very heavy themes based off of Eastern religious traditions and ideals into the main plot. While such allegory was certainly present in the first game, DDS2 lays it on much thicker, giving the story a very distinct and unique flavor quite unlike anything else in the Western market. While religious concepts in RPGs are nothing new (it's certainly one of the Megaten series' hallmarks), the Eastern slant is very refreshing in a genre where thinly veiled Christian allegory (often involving corrupt churches similar to a very well-known institution) has become overly cliché.
Short, but Ever-so-sweet
The game is not without its letdowns, though. The biggest issue would the game would be its length and variety - specifically, its lack of it. Story events occur constantly and progression from one area to the next happens in rapid-fire succession, so much so that the player might not ever discover some of the bonuses that come from backtracking in-between dungeon crawls.
In addition, the game doesn't seem to offer as much in terms of setting and enemy variety as the original DDS - in fact, played straight through, DDS2 is only around a 30~35-hour game. While that's a pretty reasonable length for those of us with jobs and lives, you'll probably find that the game enthralls you so much that you really, truly do want to have more of it to enjoy. Fighting battles for level-boosting and skill-learning without any story progression only helps alleviate this feeling for so long.
Another annoyance is that decisions you made in the previous game - ones that you may not have realized would have any consequences - might just come back to bite you in the ass in DDS2. You'll lose out on some fairly useful character skills if you gave a bad response in certain points, but what caused me and my friends the most aggravation was realizing that choices made early on in DDS1 affect the final party's composition in a way a lot of us weren't really satisfied with. By the time you realize you might have messed up, it will be too late to undo the damage - unless you feel like going back through DDS1 again to try to make things right. While I certainly wouldn't mind playing through these games again, this might not be an ideal option for those of us with limited time on our hands.
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