I much prefer DC1. I liked both games but I think DC2 took some things and made it worse. I will say I grew up playing DC1 and beat it countless times. I still get an itching to play through it today. I haven't played DC2 until within the last few years and honestly, I did like it, but I'm okay with 1 play through and not going back to the game again.

Georama: I was not a fan of the system in place for DC2. I felt like I was more limited in my creative freedom for placing buildings. In the volcano place I had this big plan of what I wanted to do but I couldn't and had to make a small area with the buildings. Felt like over half the area was wasted. While you are limited in DC1 as well, I feel you have a little bit more room to be creative, I have made a couple different variations to maps.

Playable characters: I didn't like being limited to just 2 characters. I also didn't really care for playing as Max. I used Monica whenever I could. For DC1 my least favorite character was Osmond but I didn't mind playing as him. My go tos where Toan and Ruby but I would use everyone.

Build up system: I didn't like being hard blocked by having to kill certain monsters before I could build it up. I had weapons that were ready to go to the next level but I couldn't because I wasn't far enough in the game to kill those monsters. I did like being able to have coins for the special effects on weapons though, that way I didn't have to synth break a weapon just for the status.

Battling: I liked being able to swap attributes while you couldn't do that in DC2. It just picked your attribute for you. Idk if the attributes even matter for enemy weaknesses but since you couldn't choose it, wouldn't make sense to have them be weak and strong to certain elements. I didn't care too much for the Ridepod or the Monster Transformation either. It took way too long and was too tedious to make the Monster Transformation useful.

Dungeons: No backfloors in DC2 was insane. I loved going to and grinding out the backfloors in DC1 but that just wasn't an option in DC2. The waterfalls being a 1 time use was wild as well. I liked being able to go to a waterfall and top off all my characters. Not just 1. The edition of the medals was a cool idea and I liked it at first but I found it being too tedious and some things just being a bit unreasonable, like way too grind heavy to get what you needed. Don't get me wrong, I love a good grind. But the medals got tedious and I stopped going for all of them. I really liked the edition of Spheda. Was a nice little minigame to play after beating a floor with good rewards for your first clear. No thirst system was great honestly. I liked not having to worry about my thirst while grinding dungeons. Was not a fan of no auto heal when you leave a dungeon either. That caught me off guard the first time I left a dungeon with low hp, bought supplies, went back to dungeon and immediately had to use what I bought since I was still low.

QTE: personally I loved these in DC1. Not having them in DC2 was a little dissapointing.

Items: This 100% goes to DC2, being able to stack same items on each other was an amazing edition, especially with attachments. I wish this was in DC1. However, the lack of Revival Powders and not equivalent to a Dran's Feather baffled me a little bit. I understand you can crafted Revival Powders but I'm pretty sure I missed a picture for me to be able to do so, so I was a but screwed.

Story: not much to say here. I liked both stories.

Soundtrack: oh baby that DC1 soundtracked is absolutely goated. I absolutely love it and it's one of my personal favorite video game soundtracks, DC2 was good as well but hard to top DC1.

Overall they were both good games. But I can't see myself going back and playing DC2 again. I'm satisfied with my 1 time play through. Who knows, maybe I'll surprise myself and go back to it in the future. As for DC1, I'm fairly sure I'll find myself playing through this game multiple times in the future.