The design changes were a bit of a shock to me, and I didn't like them, but other than that I liked the second game fine. Not as much as the other two, but I still really liked it.

Albedo is my favourite villain and his relationship with Jr. is one of the best in game I feel, and this game really focused on that and it had some amazing scenes to it. That being said, I don't feel like enough story progression happened in II because they were busy telling the past

Episode III is a masterpiece though and I think they did an awesome job of combining the first two game and fixing both their kinks. Like the story in Episode I was great and well told, but the battle style was convoluted and unnecessarily complicated and difficult (especially for 11 year old me, who didn't realize to switch Techs to HI until the Kookai Foundation, since it wasn't well explained and is something pretty important to making the game that much easier), but III I feel is where the series hit its peak, and its a shame II turned off so many fans that they didn't play it