I just unlocked the whole kingdom mechanic last night, and spent some time tinkering around including actually creating and leveling up a few Higgledies. I haven't really had the chance to see the effect though. This game is nuts compared to the first in terms of tweakable mechanics, though I'm not sure it ultimately matters much lol.
I'm liking the game so far, but while I feel it's still pretty early on, I do have some issues with it. On the technical side, it frustrates me how zoomed in the camera is most of the time. Like, I want to have a wider perspective of my surroundings, especially since the world map is a lot more navigate-y than the first game with weird terrain and paths (and I do have to say the textures kinda suck a lot of the time). Also holy crap is the text too small. Normal text boxes and menus are bad enough, but the smaller dialogue boxes that dynamically pop up as characters talk to each other without interrupting gameplay are damn-night illegible.
I also have to say I'm not really sold on combat. It legitimately feels like just a mashfest. Usually of heavy attacks so I can try to stun. Sure, some bosses or larger enemies have attacks that need dodging, but it's not that satisfying, despite everything going on with weapons and Higgledies and battle skills (which I rarely use). And maybe I'm missing something or I'm not far enough, but I miss the healer role, in terms of being able to cast party heals reliably throughout combat and not just through a skill. Currently my main way of healing is green Higgledies, but even then it's unreliable whether or not they'll prompt me for the AOE heal.
Part of this might be a symptom of level scaling. So far I've felt like either enemies are not dangerous at all (even if they're 5 levels above me), or just literally impossible (my attacks do 2-3 damage while theirs do hundreds, so even with perfect play I can chip away for 10 minutes and barely see the lifebar decrease, and then one mistake and I wipe). So like, the game is teaching me to only pick on things my own size which is super boring.
Love the music and characters though, and the story is charming enough so far!