It seems that the levels between guardians learning skills are completely useless. Is my interpretation correct?
Prrrrrretty much - if there's another criticism to level at TB2, it's that there are empty levels in cases, and that can feel pretty grody. Lower-rarity weapons and armor can have weak or empty levels, too, though it seems like S or higher will always get
some good amount of stats out of a level.
That said, the levels just fly by once you actually get down to some metal zone hunting, and all the Guardians I've seen so far max out their skill-sets well before 99. Hitting 99 is more about unlocking recodes for them, which allow them to change up their skills (and for lower-rarity guardians, get skills in all six slots).
That's a really good comparison. Terra Battle 1 fights were fun because they required strategy: thinking about what kind of skills you needed to take in, positioning to avoid attack patterns, deciding which enemies needed to be taken out first, etc. Terra Battle 2 is just getting mobbed by a gazillion enemies randomly, which takes all the strategy and thinking out. Now I enjoy a Musou game every now and then, but the 3D nature of those games is able to make them more fun than the simple grid-based combat here. It's just... I'm not sure what kind of enjoyment I'm supposed to find here. The one person who seems to really take to 2 in here, SpaceDrake, seems to enjoy it precisely because it lets you mindlessly overpower tons of enemies, which is not at all what I want here.
Well, stealth digs aside
, I don't find it mindless; you still need to take your positioning into account (due to your AoE distributions), you need to decide if you want to focus on guys moving next turn vs. overall number of dudes (or focus on, say, empowered enemies like the ones you find in chapter 2), you need to make sure your own team is in position to get everything off, and for fighting bigger/tougher stuff you do need to keep enemy retaliation in mind, too.
It requires
different strategic thinking than TB1 did, and I think that's just weirding people out.
Though FWIW, I really recommend people try the Leviathan maps once you have some gear and stuff at level 15 or so. It should be more up the alley of TB1 players (all enemies are immovable, you need to think about your positioning more than the foe's, etc.)