I truly believe that Cline learned from his mistakes with Armada. Samantha was more well-written than in Ready Player One and the pop-culture word vomit was reduced. While I don't think that a sequel was necessary at all, I do think that it performed well. There were surprises both in adversaries and in twists, though the character development in Wade was questionable. I enjoyed the ending overall, but felt that some of the quest dragged on a bit in the middle.