This game is a nice way to pick up where the last one left off.
The good: It has an excellent story line, and all the extra characters find some way to make themselves a credible part of the story. The soundtrack is quite good. The bonus anime DVD is also great, and contributes stuff to the game as well.
The bad:
Graphically this game is mediocre; it's not bad but it isn't anything spectacular, either. Leveling up is slow and difficult, and boss battles can be insanely hard. A lot of the dungeon crawling gets repetitive after a while as well. It's SHORT for an RPG, with around 20 hours to it, and Bandai could have put two or more parts on one disc to make a normal-length RPG if they wanted to. It's just more proof of businesses making games shorter to save themselves some cash, which is disheartening.
Overall the negatives don't even remotely make this game to be unplayable, and it is definitely worth getting (or at least renting).