This game was horrible in so many ways and made a complete mockery of the first which was amazing. To start, Lloyd and his friends are no longer the main characters and no its not to avoid level inconsistency gripes because you will get some of them as temporary quests in your party with levels as low as 10 (in Colette's case) regardless of their level in the previous game. Not only this but somehow Lloyd somehow becomes a psychotic mass murderer which is the exact opposite of anyone who plays the previous game would remember him as. It doesn't help that both Emil and Marta are extremely spiteful dissing everyone who they know to be or have been Lloyd's friends when they know nothing about what happened other than what they think they know.
Yet another problem is that the new main character is a crybaby, he cries nonstop through the entire game and the only time he is tolerable is when ratatosk possess him. Another gripe of mine is how they killed off the free roam and replaced it with a world map menu where you choose from a selection of places you can visit, sure it saves time but it also ruins the fun of exploring. And lastly none of the truth from the previous game was exposed everyone continues living in ignorance, everyone continues to believe Martel was a goddess and that Mithos was a hero.