Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment, because I was convinced to buy Dark Deity II on a recent sale. To my own surprise, I actually completed it. To get the obvious out of the way, it's a major improvement gameplay wise over the original. Many of my complaints about how the mechanics work and the UI communicates them are resolved; there's no longer a convoluted armor/damage resistance system, weapons exist as actual weapons instead of upgrade categories, classes are much more clear about what their roles are supposed to be, and you're no longer constantly bombarded by new characters who are going to be just as good as the ones you've already trained. The wound system has been reworked as well so that rather than permanently removing a stat point or two on unit death they instead get a debuff for the next stage; so a someone getting KO'd means that next round they can start with no mana (more on that) or a -1 to movement or another debuff; I really liked this.
The new class system is a bit of a mixed bag, imo. The classes are all balanced pretty well; there's four branches, with each branch having eight classes (these are divided pretty evenly amongst your units), with those classes divided evenly into two tiers. You can switch between classes in a tier freely as long as you have the item for it, but once you promote a tier upwards you can't get access to any of the classes in the prior tier and instead your character inherits the passives of the class they promoted from. Skills come in three tiers; every character has a personal skill, unique to them, and then the subsequent two tiers of classes provide two skills unique to those classes. Skills have to be activated on command, passive skills (buff, debuffs, healing, movement, etc.) can all be activated without a unit ending their turn but skills that damage units end a unit's turn. Skills can be upgraded/specialized too, which is cool; for example, one of the first real skills you have access to is teleport on your Jaigen (the kid mage from the first game, now in his mid-30s) is Teleport, which lets him send an adjacent unit x amount of spaces away, including through walls. This can be upgraded to increase the range, decrease the cost, and allow him to target himself. Other skills have similar upgrade options, making them more economical or more dramatic. All skills cost mana and every unit has a pool of 100 and regenerates it each turn.
Items are closer to FE than DD1 but still distinct. Classes have a predetermined weapon type (and basic attack range), units can only carry one weapon into battle, weapons have no durability and can be upgraded with two effects to modify their stats or give them extract effects. Units don't have an inventory, and there's no consumables (so all healing is done through skills or weapon upgrades), but units can be equipped with up to two rings. Rings are forgeable from gems you can acquire/buy over the course of the campaign and can radically change how units play.
Maps are generally better than DD1, they're much less claustrophobic, there's different victory conditions, there's optional objectives you can complete for bonuses, and the UI is much better at telling you how a matchup is going to go. Also, the story presents you with options; these will have minor effects on the story later on and give you rewards upfront, no new units. Not great but I appreciate the effort. The game is definitely trying to be replayable, since it not only offers that but also has completely customizable difficultly, including being able to do stuff like turn on unit randomizers. Pixel art is still pretty solid too, most character designs are decent and there's clearly better coordination between the two. There's also (almost) full voice acting, which is generally decent.
It's far from a perfect game though. Classes are still disappointing; they doubled down on the DnD/Forgotten Realms influence, so you can get energy monks and units with animal companions (skills) but no one can remember how to ride a horse in my fantasy medieval strategy battle sim (including the son of the guy who was a knight in the first game). Moreover, your classes are unique to you; your units never use the enemies' classes and they never use yours. This means that you're kept out of more traditional SRPG classes for one and also don't have a clear idea of what enemy classes might be capable of against you on the other. This also means that all units have the same base movement as each other, and because weapons are dependent on class there's no real interplay with them in terms of weaknesses or resistances or counters. Additionally, you are always restrained to ten units per map, barring the ones where you get a new unit when you already have ten.
The writing is still pretty bad, but in largely different ways. The pacing is much slower, you're not being rushed from setpiece to setpiece while having a bunch of perspective shifts to establish the grand conspiracy, but instead the main conflict in the story takes a long while to actually get off and you're not given a good reason for investment beyond some family drama. The game is a sequel but doesn't require much knowledge of the first game; it takes place around twenty-thirty years later, only a handful of characters are returning, only some of those are playable, and the setting is largely disconnected from the first. The game never requires you to know something about the first game to understand/appreciate what's happening. but it also doesn't explore its own setting or characters particularly well for it, and sequel bait abounds. The antagonists are one-dimensional, girlbosses drive the plot (the game at least gives you the option to kill the female black admiral with enough piercings to faceplant on a magnet), the game really likes hammering in the 'monarchy bad' theme, and the main character becomes very,
very whiny in the last quarter of the game, where one of the few genuinely likeable characters is also killed off in a cutscene. Also the game has one of the most depressing outcomes I've seen in a sequel:
You play as the kids of the main character of the first game, Irving, and the healer girl you start out with, Maren. Them becoming a couple is canon in the first game; you don't get to choose the romances. At some point after their kids were born, Maren got fed up with Irving being focused on managing the politics of the continent they were on and just decided to up and leave. He never cheated on her, it's not stated their marriage was strained beyond that, she just decided to abandon their family and return to the continent they came from. She never visits her kids, though she still writes them. Aside from this being a massive case of character assassination (for what character Maren had in the first game), this is just depressing; if you can't get a genuine romance in a fantasy setting where can you get it? Goddamn millennial writing.
Overall I can actually recommend DD2 on sale.