I so badly wanted to hate, but this was a really good game

In almost every way this game is a significant upgrade from the first. Right away, the animations and cut scenes are awesome. The game also gives you multiple weapons that are all unique, fun & interesting to use, and interact with the world in cool ways. Improved movement options make the game feel so much faster and the combat so much more fun, flowy, and interesting. These two factors also allowed them to add in more interesting movement puzzles into the world. The ability to customize your build and setup and the variety in spells solves the 1 dimensional combat issue that I had with the first one. I also appreciate that a lot of important quests were marked on the map for you, so you didn't spend hours being lost or have to look on the wiki for answers. In terms of criticism, the lore/story still made absolutely 0 sense to me (I'll probably watch a full 2hr video on it at some point). The difficulty felt a bit all over the place - some of the feeder bosses took me 15-20 tries, but the 2nd to last boss took me 3 tries and the final boss took me a single try. Although the movement options are a huge huge huge improvement to the first, they (and combat) can still feel slow and clunky. This also may have to do with the combat and movement animations more than the pure mechanics themselves, but the animations are not my favorite/the smoothest either. Lastly, there's still a fair share of bs, aids, clankiness, and unfairness to the game where you can get stun locked, hit during boss cut scenes, and stuff like that. All in all very fun, well made game. I've not full full completed the game and all the quests and I've only played through a small portion of the Mea Culpa DLC. Don't feel a strong desire to fully complete the game rn, but maybe I'll return to it in the future idk.