Well, especially the middle part and the very end should’ve been a bit more epic in terms of story IMO. Of course, the lack of epic stuff made the game a lot realer than other RPGs, and that is probably what BK2 was aiming for in the first place... and seeing that Sagi was used by Nero from the very start, it was only a logical life for Sagi.
But, there were those times when I got kinda mad that just not enough was going on. It was really well-paced up to where you make a deal with Nero, the whole Organ Emperor successor/Machina vs. Heart Wing talk came up as well as finding the first Marpelshuro orphan (iji) as well as one of Shanat, Naska, Hyuze and Varala. However, afterwards, it became like a somewhat boring “Tour de Flying Islands”. It felt like “ah, let’s visit Island 3 and ask for help... and surprise, we have to fight an iji there and still getting owned by Naska and co. Ok, next island, same thing, fight an iji, getting pawned by another of the four guys etc.”.
I mean, that alone wouldn’t be so bad, but since we already knew almost every continent and city from BK1, there was just not enough new stuff there, especially since all of the boss fights ended up being virtually the same story-wise.
Then, the thing with the parallel story from Sagi as Marno 1000 years ago in the Age of the Gods was quite a nice implementation to counter the present-time story. Whenever something interesting started to take place, it was back to the old age and vice-versa. I’m not sure how much of the story was revealed in the end though, because I have yet to beat Waizman.... but for me, a bit too much was left in the shadows.
The showdown with Dark Giro and the scenes afterwards however, wow, those felt really intense. And being able to get a Game Over by dialogue choices after the hardest in-game boss in the game... lol, luckily, they let you save before. Would’ve been too cruel otherwise.
Finally, the end-game was well-done again IMO, although, heaving to revisit old places, beating up all the Machina-enforced guys and visiting an island of Milly’s childhood just for the sake of some friggin’ stone statues... meh... I dunno.
And as I said already, having Nero rather than Wahrheit as the final boss was pretty cool too, although I basically expected from the very beginning that Nero DID have more things up his sleeve. With that name anyway....
Gotta love the final dungeon music btw, seems to be some remix of the Cor Hydrae BGM. And the final battles itself... well... as I said, for my taste, they were almost too real. I like human final bosses rather than uber-crazy monsters, BUT they should at least have some fancy attacks and not only regular attacks and a max of 2 special attacks.
In many ways, even though not visible from the start, BK2’s story began to ressemble BK1’s more and more towards the end sadly, especially with the whole “Sagi being an artificially created Serei-tsuki/Jashin-tsuki, first to be considered as a failure, but ultimately takes the cup” thing. Also, for my taste, they should’ve made the issue with Sagi being created more outlined. You first hear about it from Shanat in the Vega Prison IIRC... then, no word on it anymore until the final battle... and that was it.
Finally, my last gripe: Child Savyna got waaaayyyy too little screen time...