Notes:

Copypaste from /xgg/

Ohhhh man. Just to rundown:
>Not only can you recruit Patrohka, Mikhail, and Akhos' blades, you can even recruit the three of them by themselves, and they will be available both as random core crystal drops or as rewards from quests, AND they appear to have unique weapons
>you can now remove story blades, including pyra, even in the first run, and send them on missions
>new driver affinity charts with even stronger bonuses
>you can change level freely at inns, instead of just increasing
>you can exchange bonus EXP for items that INCREASE THE NUMBER OF ACCESSORY SLOTS
>a certain special blade now has a lv.4 special
And the features that are available right from the beginning:
>you can now lock blades, and they will be more visible and impossible to release
>you can SKIP CORE CRYSTAL OPENING SEQUENCES
>you can now customize the icons that appear on the in-game map overlay
>new easy mode for the game proper just for s-------
>presumably they added the ability to stack accessories and aux chips?

And finally, what you keep from game to game:
>levels
>equipment
>art levels
>all your blades(!)
>consumable items and gold
>gold
>dev level
>merc level
>event theater scenes
>unique monster tombstones