2 has... problems. It looks like a bingo of bad anime tropes and terrible character designs. It's almost pervy comedy harem anime territory at times. You've probably heard cringe as a complaint, and yeah, it has that, quite a bit of it. It's not all that bad, but when it is, it's terrible.

It also has a pseudo-gatcha system (no actual microtransactions, thank you for that) to unlock optional characters. These all have side quests tied to them. Some are absurdly rare, hundreds of hours of farming and opening random capsules kind of rare. I hate it.

Mechanically, fights are fun at least, and of course it brings a bit of context that is a bit important to 3, so it's hard to recommend skipping it if you want the full story.

Weird thing, the XC2 DLC episode, a prequel of sort, was very good. It's short, but focused on a small group of likeable characters, and it's like they concentrated the good parts of the main game in a neat, fun package.