This season is a big improvement over the first in every aspect. The mech visuals are good as always, and they even got the classic VN OP singers back to sing the OP for this season. It's less confusing for newcomers due to reaching the more exciting part of the story that also does not rely on unadapted material that much and has many fights, the character animation is more consistent with far fewer weird-looking moments, and the aforementioned good mech animation is used for those large-scale fights to its fullest potential. Season 1 was already notably better after the first three episodes, but this season blows everything in season 1 out of the water. They really did well with adapting some of the key moments of the original story here, even on an emotional level.
Even though a season 3 is unlikely (season 2 was announced right after season 1 ended), I prefer the two-thirds of an MLA adaptation that we have through these two seasons, to rushing everything in 1-2 cours like we thought they would. To any VN readers who are thinking about watching this or dropped the show early on in season 1, trust me, it really DOES get better after the first few episodes in season 1, and especially in this season. For newcomers, I would first and formost recommend reading the visual novel or officially translated manga first if you want to understand all the details and get a more complete experience. But if you don't like visual novels or manga, you can enjoy this as a show with cool mech fights and some original ideas.
