Really having a blast with Ender Magnolia, strong recommend

The game was pretty good up until you hit the >! Central Stratum!< then it really seems to hit it's stride. It feels like the production values have gone up, some banger music, interesting maps, beautiful environments, and tons of great enemies. Feels much more alive than the first game, and I liked the first. And it is not short, I will easily wind up passing 20 hours on this, but I am always slow.

And the difficulty is Dark Souls IMO but man it feels so good, the kind of difficulty where you feel like you can get it and then you do and it is feels very rewarding. I never parry in games, even in Dark Souls it feels like a high risk for not enough reward for my playstyle, but the parrying really clicks for me in this game. It is high reward; major AOE damage amd there is no way to block in the game, there are a couple bosses no way I could have beat without it. i'm not a huge action combat guy and consider myself average at video games (I'm in my mid 40s but probably better than I have ever been so that doesn't say much) but the combat in this game is great.