DC1 may not have had a story, but at least it didn't have a bad one. This is grossly overrated.
-The Georama system offers more ways to arrange towns than before.
-The graphics are pretty decent.
-Several different ways to fashion weapons.
-Piloting and customizing a ride pod is pretty cool.
-Having people move around with you on the train wherever you go was a good design idea.
-A couple of mildly fun mini-games and picture taking elements.
Bad:
-The story is horribly slow paced, unexciting, and gets bogged down by a multitude of motivational speeches and Max's stupid and repetitive thoughts.
-I can't think of a single character in this game that I actually liked, almost every character is a complete wuss and too gentle to be distinct or believable.
-The voice acting is high pitched and annoying, and there's too much overkill dialog throughout the game. It's like this: "Hey, I've got an idea, let's go to the forest!" "Yeah, ok the forest!" "Oh boy I love forests! Come on!" "I've never been in a forest before." "Don't be scared, it's just a forest." Why should I care about these characters when they talk like 4 year olds?
-The dungeons, while randomized, are still ridiculously bland. Run down the corridor... kill something... run down the next corridor... kill something. Yet people compare this game to Zelda. Outrageous.
-Repetitive monsters and puzzle elements.
-The music is just okay.
-Why can't we just build one big town the way we want to? No sense of ownership is conveyed when theres so many different areas we have to build in exactly one way in order to move the story forward. It's just frustrating to have all this ability to customize, but the game is looking for X house in this position and Y house there etc.
-Too many overly complicated systems that could've been a lot more fun if they were more simple and intuitive.