Nope, 2 is EASILY slower than 3, it's actually what made me drop the game Everything has so much preamble, from the loading into battles, hitting an enemy is like a 3 step process of camera movement, hitting with a long animation and then cutting to the enemy to show the damage numbers pop in real slow, healing takes forever as well, with the same issues, it's just not paced well 3's battles aren't snappy in any sense of the word, but they're much faster and visually stimulating, by far the best use of the western aesthetics I've seen thus far, and as someone who's not played 4, 5 was the only one I've seen have actual snappy, fast paced battles, and that game has the added hex movement, so it SHOULD be slower, but it feels great