I have finished this game, it was much shorter than I expected but it was still good. It had some of the same issues as the previous game but some of them were fixed. The actions seemed to be more useful (although I might not of gotten all of them because I beat normal mode at level 10 and I tried hard mode but I can't seem to get out of the first area). The restraining attacks seem like less of an issue in normal mode (hard mode is a different story). And character levels seemed to do more than just give new abilities, which is probably why I was able to beat normal mode at about half the level as the previous game (I beat AOP at around level 20 iirc).