I came across High Card last year during the winter season and found it really interesting, you can check out my review there, in which i highlighted the need to step up the game and fix some flaws that were making the show slow, repetitive and even lackluster. This second season highlighted all the issues, and i feel so upset because i wanted this show to be good, even if I am one of the very few people that watched it. I feel like i will go in-depth, so SPOILERS AHEAD, since i know you will probably not watch it, i wouldn't even suggest it at this point.
There are so many things, uh, I don't even know where to start. Let's talk about the characters. We had a lot of Wendy, which ended up being one my of favorite characters, because apparently she is the only one in which all the hype and cool fights are gathered, and she sees some development, finally aiming at a balance between her two versions. Chris is still a chad, he almost never misses through both seasons, even now that he's fighting for his life and his power has been nerfed to the ground, and even so he refuses to give up, and tries his best to protect Finn, which he basically sees as his buddy/younger brother. Their chemistry is very good, they always look to help each other, after all that happened. On the other hand, Finn still seems like the emotional support: his gun sometimes is the weakest weapon known to humanity, sometimes it cuts through everything. Did they forget that he tried different skills, like stacking up multiple bullets to create a huge impact? But since he's somehow related to the old legend of the cards, he's "the protagonist" that will surely win (they even make a superior being say this shit). It's insane how useless he gets, you can clearly see it in this season as the main High Card team is basically tied to Wendy going berserk, the other ones just get owned and they are lucky no one wants them dead. What the hell. You can even more clearly notice it in Leo, which almost never uses his card, which is actually one of the coolest...we only see it in the last episode, and just as a showoff. The only reason he's there is because he wants to get recognized by his father Theodore, and we even get a full episode of his struggle at the College. They wanted us to empathize with him, they tried, but in the end his father gets the cool scenes and perhaps the most interesting plot twist of the whole season, so he stills proved nothing beside being petty and rather annoying. And let's just not forget that Theodore once again showed how useless some cards can be...He has a damn Queen, why can he just see through things when we saw a guy with a different Q that was literally The Flash of this world? And even Ban Klondike who can twist people to death, i mean...the power scale seem to be so random, as already shown in the previous season, with the "pull things towards me" girl and the "literally control gravity" woman. I will not talk about green guy because i want to see the upcoming episode about him first, but I came to the conclusion that if he died, nobody would have noticed, not even the High Card team. Last but not least, since i mentioned her previously, the super stupid police woman, Sugar! Fuck, even talking about her makes me mad. Such a stereotype, and one of the bad kind: she makes a mess, she decides to take the wheel and gather all the cards, but then fails to realize that if you don't have powers, the ones that do are going to beat your ass, and so back to being useless after having your whole team killed and the base demolished. Honestly, she deserves to die, but hey, no one actually dies in this show, just Captain Young, the corrupt detective that showed how little i cared about these characters. Any other character I haven't mentioned is just there to show off cool cards or just existing, like "King" (who the hell is that guy, we barely saw his past, i really have no clue) and many more.
Another huge issue is the power scale: by making the X-Hand have such a massive drawback, the story has to force weak players to get buffed for no reason, and we saw this plenty of times, while fighting the Black Night. Jesus, during the military base episodes they even had so many cards with them, just play a couple of cards! No, let's just use the power of friendship to dropkick an armored knight that splits people in half with a giant sword. Again, bad writing choices lead to such issues. What if Wendy used a double Ace, what if Finn used a double or even three of a kind? Even when he had the Joker, shouldn't the Joker be used as any card? That was an easy one, but I guess we will never know...also, how do they even know how to use the X-hand, can they decide the use? I don't think they cared to explain, it seemed it wasn't just an extension of one card.
What about the plot? Well, after the Klondikes were gone, all was left is a loving long-lost brother that is affected by the Black Night curse, and now has become evil and needs to be killed. Nothing new, plain boring. Such a shame, the visuals are great, so unique and well made, but i think that maybe Kawamoto took too much time to design the outfits while maybe he should have focused on making the whole thing a little less boring. Still, i liked it, but the potential was there, and watching it being wasted is a massive disappointment...i think we are not gonna see more High Card, if not for other instances of the Franchise, so this season needed more, it was the last chance.