It didn't matter when the game released, or on what platform. The game was basically broken due to the pathetically easy difficulty level.
I loved the first one, even though it itself was a bit on the easy side (once you'd upgraded your roster), but at least it had challenges in the form of the ultra stages and even rewarded you with finishing the stages with all 3 characters, which wasn't always a walk in the park.
If they were aiming the sequel at a much younger audience than the first then it would make some sense, but as far as I'm aware there was no shift in marketing to support this.
The only reason to keep playing was to see the world design, though this too, I thought, was a big downgrade on the first. Kingdom battle had a kind of toybox diorama aesthetic that really worked & seamlessly integrated the stages into the actual level design. Sparks of Hope on the other hand reverted to looking like most other generic 3rd person cartoony adventures & done away with the integration of the stages into the level.
I dunno what happened but many bad decisions were made & it was just baffling how little effort you had to put in to win a battle on even the hardest setting. What's the point of making a strategy game that is so easy that you don't have to emply any actual strategy?