Narratively there are three strands of seemingly unrelated story that come together in the end. The problem is that you are locked into doing them in a linear order and you can only do a little bit of A before being sent off to B and so on. Just as you get invested in a certain plotline you're whisked away to the next one. On paper having multiple plotlines that come together is fine, but the execution along with the forced linearity makes it a jarring and unfun experience. You aren't allowed to just be immersed in any particular plotline from beginning to end or tackle them in an order that you'd find more pleasing. The stories themselves were interesting. I just think the story structure did much to undermine the enjoyment.

Note: this criticism applies to the first game as well and probably Avadon 3 although I've yet to play it.

Gameplay also suffers from pacing issues. The first half is fine but once you get to the Tawon Empire enemies will start to have some HP bloat. They don't become that much more challenging, it just takes longer to get through each encounter making it an exhausting experience in the long run. Especially boss fights which Vogel likes to make more challenging by having lots of additional enemies flood the arena after X turns or after the boss takes Y amount of damage. Usually what would happen to me is after dealing with the boss encounter I'd spend several more turns just cleaning up the chaff. It didn't make the encounters tactically that much more challenging or interesting, just longer. It was difficult to feel any sense of accomplishment after taking down named enemies since the encounters were just grinds to get through.