As a sequel to Absented Age: Squarebound, it's Spoilers Off for that game. You Have Been Warned!

After the events of the previous game, Karen makes steady progress in collecting her Heart Fragments, but continues to struggle with her seeming inability to to truly identify as her old self or match up to her old self's musical ability. Just when Karen is one Heart Fragment away from completion, someone steals the Heart Fragments of Karen's friends, causing them to turn into stone statues. Now Karen has to search for her friends' Heart Fragments in the Driftworlds, but this won't be an easy task with the Gängers using her friends' traumas to manipulate them. Worse yet, a mysterious woman in Karen's Heart's Core, Sarah, warns Karen that she failed to prevent a calamity in another timeline, though she seeks to help Karen in order to make her strong enough to avert the Bad Future.

The gameplay builds on the Action RPG and turn-based hybrid system of the previous game by adding new equipment and features. Summonstones can now be used all Story Mode dungeons and not just in specific ones. There is now a shopkeeper, Coupe, who sells a random selection of items in exchange for Driftworld points. The Elicio Church associate, Seiji, can transfer skills from one piece of equipment to another. Finally, there are new types of terrain effects, dungeon traps, and other environmental mechanics that require the player to be careful, yet creative when exploring.

The English version has a Steam page here.

This game contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: In the Final Boss fight, Prim Alter shrugs off her defeat due to the battle taking place in her Heart's Core. After Suzu reveals herself as Shishiki and causes the stream of the battle to go viral, reality and the Heart's Core become close enough for Karen to take control of the Driftworld space. This adds a new skill, Summon Override, which transforms Karen into her Alter Form while summoning the story Summonstone allies, as well as Rumi.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The Lost World locks the player into the dungeon with no means to escape without clearing it. To make things fair for unprepared players, the dungeon has only one boss at the 20F Hollow, where victory isn't required, meaning they can just flee to the floor gates if they don't want to waste time and resources fighting the enemies. Additionally, the Suspend Save can be used without limit unlike in other dungeons, meaning the player won't have to redo the whole dungeon even if they die repeatedly on the same floor.
• Artificial Stupidity: Enemies aren't always mindful of stage hazards, as shown by how the ones in the Lost World can walk into the low reality zones, which instantly kills non-ghosts or anyone who lacks terrain damage immunity.
• Background Music Override: Some Summonstone characters have their own associated BGM, which replaces the current BGM as long as they're not summoned in a boss fight. Of note is Mika, who causes the music to change to Duskbraver, her Superboss music from the previous game.
• Bad Future: According to Sarah, the tutorial/prologue stage takes place in a future where Karen failed to save Mika and the entire city of Amefuribashi. Karen was unable to obtain the final Heart Fragment in time to stop Prim before Amefuribashi was flooded.
• Bag of Spilling: Downplayed. The Old Save Bonus won't transfer over items from the previous game or DP. However, equipment mastery and skill tree progress are retained. Old equipment can be reobtained by playing Arcade Mode or taking them from old Summonstone characters like Scale, Astrake, and Iris. "Death and Broody," the reward from the previous game's superboss, can be obtained in the postgame on Karen's apartment roof.
• The Battle Didn't Count: In the Lost World, knocking Yayoi to low HP in his boss fight causes the battle to end. He then defeats Karen and Tarte in a cutscene, regardless of how the actual battle was going.
• Bookends: The final story dungeon is the Sleeping City Driftworld, which has the same tileset as the Awakening Driftworld, the tutorial dungeon of the previous game.
• Cassandra Truth: In Prim's backstory, she and Sarah tried to warn people of paranormal disasters, but no one believed them due to their lack of clout.
• The Cavalry:
  • In the Lost World, Yayoi nearly kills Karen, only for Mika to suddenly appear and take the hit. She takes no damage due to her petrified body and knocks out Yayoi in one hit. She then takes control of Yayoi's Elicio robots and has them carry Karen and Yayoi, all while she fights her way through the next ten floors of the dungeon. In the Rooftop Driftworld Core, she arrives in time to rescue Karen, Tarte, and Rumi from a group of Gängers.
  • During the Final Boss fight against Prim Alter, she fills the arena with ice pillars, cutting off Karen's movement. Suzu shows up and uses her Jet Accel skill to remove most of the pillars. She reveals that she and Karen's allies set up a livestream of the boss arena in order to bring this place closer to reality, allowing Karen to use Summonstones.
• Cutting the Knot: Most puzzles are designed with the expectation that the player only has story Summonstones, which usually lack the ability to pop balloons if they're hidden behind walls or glass. Sho's Summonstone action can bypass walls completely, and can do so at a much longer range than Mika's Summonstone action, allowing it to trivialize most puzzles. This allows players to ignore the intended solution that would normally require clever usage of stage gimmicks.
• Detrimental Determination: In a dark mirror to Karen, Rumi's middle school club advisor became obsessed with defeating Karen's club and tried to put Rumi's club through ridiculously strenuous training, with one student pointing out that this would likely destroy their health. Even when everyone in the club left except for Rumi, the club advisor and the school administration saw no problem with this mindset.
• Discard and Draw: After the first run through the Lost World, Karen can no longer use Assist Summon with Sarah's Summonstone. Instead, she can use the Summonstone to activate her Altered Form. After Sarah's Summonstone breaks and a replica is obtained, Assist Summon is enabled for Sarah again.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Rumi and Vice Principal Fuji despise the Sado Band Club for being a rival club and for obstructing a vanity museum respectively, and are willing to erase the club's members from existence. They manipulate Kazuki into turning Hayato and Suzu into stone and trapping their Heart Fragments in the Driftworlds, which will cause the Sado Band Club to shut down from a lack of members.
• Dracolich: Draco Zombie is the boss of the Music Room Driftworld Core. This gives him both Undead and Reptile traits, adding light and ice weaknesses.
• Dual Boss:
  • The Arc Monster of the Rooftop Driftworld Core consists of Lost Memoria and Lost Spirit, who are based on the protagonists of one of the developer's untranslated games, Alias Ache.
  • The boss of the Rooftop Driftworld Core consists of Rumi and Lovelan.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The second Arc Monster, Vampire Hero, transforms into a bat after taking enough damage while also summoning several decoys. He and the clones then use a random teleportation skill to scatter themselves around the map.
• Glass Cannon: Lycoris has above average stats, but low HP and defensive stats. The higher her Voltage meter, the more damage she deals and receives, while shortening the AOE of Voltage skills.
• Grapple Move:
  • Yukihime's Iron Grip skill allows her to grab an enemy, which prevents that enemy from acting until they break out of the grab. While the enemy is grabbed, Yukihime has access to only four skills, two of which are throws that end the grab state, one of which (Iron Spark) is akin to a pummel in Super Smash Bros., and one of which (Void Swallow) is an instant death move that heals her if it procs. Missing with Iron Spark or Void Swallow causes the grab state to end, requiring the player to pay attention to the success rate of each skill. Other enemies can still move and attack, making her grab more suitable against a single, non-heavy enemy than against multiple enemies.
  • Sarah, Altered Karen, and Prim have Psychokinesis as a grab move, Psychobind as a pummel, Force Bash as a forward throw, Force Rewind as a back throw, Force Cleave L as a left throw, and Force Cleave R as a right throw.
• Happy Ending Override: Although the previous game ended on an optimistic note, this game reveals that Karen is unable to perform at her peak because she still hasn't fully regained her memories and identity, causing her trumpet performance to feel off. Additionally, Coupe warns that even if Karen regains her Heart Fragments, she might not be able to become the old Karen. Additionally, it's revealed that Karen failed to materialize with Necromancy, and that the Karen at the Super Live preview was actually Mika.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Normally, Stealth Rocks cannot cause friendly fire. However, if someone uses Malkuth's Gem, this causes all active Stealth Rocks to fire lasers on the target, regardless of the rocks' ownership. This gives Mika a significant advantage over Prim, since while both can summon Stealth Rocks, only Mika can use Malkuth's Gem. However, the boss, Mika Memoria, has Malkuth's Gem and can use that against Mika in her arcade stage.
• Hope Spot: After the Entryway Driftword is cleared, Karen has six out of seven Heart Fragments. Soon afterwards, someone steals Suzu and Hayato's Heart Fragments and turns them into statues, putting the search for the seventh fragment on hold.
• In Medias Res: The Action Prologue for this game takes place some time after Squarebound, starting with Karen and Tarte exploring another Driftworld, this time with Hayato and Suzu accompanying them through Summonstones. The tutorial boss fight also reveals that Mika died, then Sarah, revealed to be the talking flower in Karen's Heart's Core, vaguely alludes to some major events that happened in the 2 months since, and then the story rewinds to the moment Karen arrives at Amefuribashi High.
• Legacy Boss Battle: The Crossing Driftworld, Park Driftworld, and Fountain Driftworld make a return in this game. Although their Gänger bosses don't make an appearance, their Arc Monsters do.
• Lightning Bruiser: Karen and Tarte have new stat nodes that are unlocked as more story-mandated Summonstones are obtained. When the two are maxed out, they end up having above average base stats compared to all other playable characters, having high offenses, defenses, and agility.
• Magically Inept Fighter: Although Alba seems like he would fit the mage archetype due to controlling puppets, he actually has low MAG growth and above average ATK growth. Additionally, he cannot use magic as often due to him converting MP costs into cooldown, which means he has to rely on his regular attacks.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: While all characters have unique mechanics, Alba takes the cake by not having any MP. Instead, all of his skills have cooldowns, and if his equipment contains skills that use MP, that MP is converted to extra cooldown. As a result, he's a character that cannot spam generic spells like everyone else can, and instead has to rotate between all of his skills.
• Mental World: The Final Boss room is Prim's Heart's Core, which is a high-tech city based on her memories of her home civilization. Unfortunately for the party, Prim has a Home Field Advantage here, which is only negated by having as many humans as possible perceive her world through a livestream. When the stream goes viral, the background changes to a sunset, showing that the party is hijacking control of her Heart's Core.
• Metal Slime: Chikuwamancers are enemies that always try to run away in action combat by teleporting away, but give a lot of EXP when killed.
• Mirror Boss: There are various Memoria bosses with the same native moveset as Karen and her Summonstone allies. However, some Memoria bosses have extra abilities and advantages the player doesn't have. Sho Memoria can change his EGOISM without examining the appropriate feather. Karen Memoria can use Summon Override to summon additional Memoria enemies and use Essence Jack to disable Karen's skills.
• No-Sell:
  • In the Brass Band Club Room, Rumi uses a Black Feather to turn Karen into stone, but it fails because Karen reverts to her ghost form, which is immune to the feather.
  • The final story Summonstone character, Mika, is immune to terrain and environmental damage. Her arcade stage description lampshades that the thunder weather is more of an advantage for her than an obstacle.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Karen states that Prim is lonely over having no one to share her memories with. She compares this to how she felt when she left the Brass Band Club and practiced by her lonesome at North Washbridge.
  • Rumi notes that Prim is genuine in wanting to save humanity, but also that she shares Rumi's flaw of pushing her own sense of justice onto others without considering their feelings, resulting in isolation.
• Old Save Bonus: The player can copy save files from the previous game's save folder to this game's save folder. This transfers equipment mastery, skill tree progress, Score of Collection uses, non-enemy encyclopedia data, Scale's Summonstone from Parking Lot Depths, and knowledge of whether or not the warehouse Superboss was defeated. However, Driftworld points, items, and equipment won't be transferred. The rewards from the Superboss don't become accessible until the postgame, where they can be found on top of Karen's apartment building.
• Optional Party Member: Karen receives several Summonstones through story progress, but some can only be obtained through side dungeons or irregular means.
  • Scale's Summonstone can be obtained by carrying over a clear save from the previous game where Karen met him.
  • Sho and Alba's Summonstones can be obtained by clearing their second arcade stages.
  • Yuna, Yukihime, and Lycoris's Summonstones can be obtained by clearing the altered versions of Crossing Driftworld, Park Driftworld, and Fountain Driftworld.
  • Astrake and Iris's Summonstones can be obtained by copying the International patch file from the first game's directory to this game's patch folder.
• Parents as People: Hayato's parents forbid him from music after a record company cheated him out of the rights to his music, believing that he should try to conform to a normal lifestyle. Later, his father reveals that he suffered from superiors at work who also demanded conformity, meaning he's trying to protect Hayato in his own way. However, Mr. Minami convinces Hayato's parents to let him practice music again, since he wouldn't find true happiness otherwise and he is capable of crafting clever loopholes to practice music in the Sado Club.
• Parting-Words Regret: In a memory in the Sleeping City Driftworld, Sarah is distraught that no one listens to her and Coco's warnings. Coco bluntly states that they lack clout and power, which angers Sarah because she has an inferiority complex over being weak. She leaves Coco and tries to seek help from an anti-anomaly organization, only for that organization to sacrifice her as bait to find an enemy hideout. Coco's regret causes her to become a Knight Templar who wants to petrify all humans and trap them in happy illusions in order to prevent Sarah's tragedy from repeating. Conversely, reuniting with Sarah via her Summonstone is enough to get Coco to pull a Heel–Face Turn.
• Permanently Missable Content: Both forms of Prim and the enemies that only show up in the Sleeping City Driftworld cannot be fought and scanned after the main story is completed.
• Play Every Day: Coupe's Dungeon Shop HQ changes its stock every day, based on real time. This encourages the player to boot up the game at least once per day to keep on eye on his wares.
• Required Secondary Powers: The Soul Eater weapon has the same ATK as Nikkari Aoe at 23 and has many useful skills, but on regular human characters, it deals continuous dark damage, making it only usable for those with special traits, like being a ghost or robot, who don't have a typical nervous system for the dark damage to target.
• Rivals Team Up: When Rumi has a Heel Realization about using Misfortune Plumes on the Sado Band Club, she and the Brass Band Club team up with the Sado Band Club to confiscate the other plumes from Vice Principal Fuji. During the Final Boss fight against Prim, the Brass Band Club helps make the battle viral so that the increased human perception of the Driftworld takes away Prim's Home Field Advantage. In the final phase, Rumi joins as a Guest-Star Party Member and the BGM changes to "Last Word", a joint song between the two clubs. In the ending, the Sado Band Club and the Brass Band Club play a piece together in the Super Live, showing that their once bitter rivalry is now a Friendly Rivalry.
• Sadist Teacher:
  • Hayato's middle school teacher put him in charge of festival preparations, but intentionally didn't tell him about a mistake on the order form. He claims that he's setting up Hayato for failure to teach him a lesson, but Hayato believes the teacher and his classmates set him up out of malice.
  • The advisor for Rumi's middle school Brass Band Club was so upset about the club losing to Karen's club that he physically abused his club and forced them to undergo harsher training. Everyone left except for Rumi, who endured so much abuse that she had to perform while her face was swollen and bandaged. Worse yet, the school administration allowed the advisor to do this.
• Summon Magic: In addition to the Summonstones introduced in the previous game, this game has other kinds of summoning mechanics.
  • Suzu can summon a stationary robot to shoot an electric projectile whenever an enemy is in its line of sight. Her Change Summon exclusive skill, Heavy Artifice, summons allied versions of the Arena Fight, Arena Blaster, and Arena Scout robots.
  • Alba can summon magidolls representing various RPG classes, such as Mercenary, Geomancer, Rogue, Strategist, Rector, and Paladin.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: At first, the game seems to be heading towards a Bittersweet Ending due to Mika dying and giving her Heart Fragment to Karen. Then Mika comes back as a benevolent Gänger and Summonstone ally. In the ending, Prim pulls a Heel–Face Turn and grants physical bodies to Karen and Mika so that they won't disappear alongside the other Gängers. The only bittersweet part left is that Sarah passes on after reconciling with Prim.
• Taken for Granite: Those who have their Heart Fragments removed are turned to stone, and this fate befalls Karen's friends, forcing her to postpone her quest to look for her friends' Heart Fragments. However, Tarte notes that it's strange that Karen's petrified body was never found. This is because the original Karen, aka Mika, was partially petrified due to losing all but one of her Heart Fragments. Meanwhile, the playable Karen never had a petrified body to return to due to her being a Gänger.
• Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child: Suzu's mother is strict about gender roles and doesn't approve of Suzu playing Robo Arena with her brother, Shishiki, due to society seeing that game as a male-dominated pastime.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Tarte and Seiji call out Mika, the original Karen, for using amnesiatics and lies to turn Satsuki into the new Karen so that she can vicariously achieve her musical ambitions, without considering how the new Karen would feel about that. Tarte is especially hurt by this, since Mika was the first human to believe in his abilities, yet she tricked him for the sake of her plan. Mika counters by saying she's tired of people telling her to give up on her dream and not understanding her single-minded passion for music, and that having Satsuki become Karen is the only way to accomplish that dream.
• Wolfpack Boss:
  • The boss of the Crimson Corridor consists of Rumi and copies of Hayato, Akane, Linh, Nanami, and Naomi.
  • Karen Memoria is the boss of the thirteenth arcade stage, and when she gets close enough to the party, she summons Memoria versions of Suzu, Hayato, Akane, Mika, and Sarah. This is meant to mirror Karen summoning all of her story Summonstone allies in the Final Boss fight against Prim.
• Worf Had the Flu: The Gänger bosses of the Hallway, Music Room, and Dark Room Driftworlds rely on the Heart Fragments of Suzu, Akane, and Hayato respectively. As a result, when they're first fought, they get weakened by scripted events where those three resist the Gängers' control. If the player refights those bosses, they fight a Driftworld recreation that doesn't rely on those Heart Fragments, meaning they never get weakened by scripted events.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The second battle against Prim Alter is locked into turn-based mode, but is otherwise the same as the previous battle. However, Karen can use Summon Override to enter her Altered Form and summon all of her friends at once, putting Prim at an overwhelming disadvantage.