(I enjoyed YW2 a lot more than 1, so I'm actually hyped for 3 now - especially with the western release all being condensed into one version)
Did they fix the horrible befriend mechanics and the low encounter rate for S rank Yo-Kai? Because I was able to finish 6 seasons of the Walking Dead by trying to befriend every single damn Yo-Kai and I wanted to die
There's an added mechanic where you can tap a yo-kai to get an extra boost to the befriending chance, and it does have a noticeable effect. I also don't think rare yo-kai were as rare as they used to be. But I think for some of them they were relegated to only appearing in specific spots, so if you're unaware of where those spots are it can take a long time (I think this happened with me and Reversette, spent forever looking for it but then when I did find it, I ended up finding it numerous times in the same tree fairly quickly).
On the flip side, there are now a lot of version exclusives you'd have to trade for, and a handful you can only get access to if you have save data for two or even all three versions of the game on your 3DS (and a few you need YW1 data to get). Pandanoko is still the same, so that's off the table unless you're super lucky, and there are a lot of QR code exclusives. One in particular there's only like 3 QR codes that give the needed coin, and even then there's only a 20% chance of getting it from the coin, so that's super lame (but not impossible since you can create a second save file to try again and again until you get it, but it takes like an hour to unlock the post office, so lol). There are like 3-4 fusion items that only drop very rarely from the new Busters mode, which is super time consuming to get them all, and another fusion item from a scratch lottery ticket that you'll also need to reset over and over and over to get (while also reading up online how to be as efficient as possible). Oh and there are a few S ranks exclusive to RNG in something called the Infinite Tunnel, which is another massive time sink.
So, uh, while befriending from battles is quicker, the game honestly still doesn't respect the player's time at all if they're trying to 100% the Pokedex. But since you can't keep your yo-kai and transfer them along to YW3 anyway, I just got what I reasonably could and called it quits.
Yeaaaah...thanks, I guess i'll pass on this. Pokemon is my favorite franchise and it's mostly because I like to collect things. But Yo-Kai Watch is one of the very few games that actually made me hate the collection aspect and it doesn't sound like Yo-Kai Watch 2 is any different. Sure it does some stuff better, but as you mentioned, it does some things a lot worse. To this day I still don't understand how I was supposed to get those Crank-a-Kai exclusives in the first game, they are the only Yo-Kai I am missing (well and that panda noko thing) ---