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Well, it's time to put out my first impressions of sword of Uruk, now that I've watched the second episode.

Animation: 5/5 Stars
I absolutely love this style, and something about it seems to work so well for the series. I can't really imagine it with a different look. I'm not sure if it is the cool pastel colors that they seem to use where nothing is saturated to an extreme, or if it is just the way the look makes me feel.

Story: 5/5 Stars
This was not a five out of five on episode one. Episode one made me sad because Jil had become emo and I was ready to start hating him because any time someone becomes emo when they weren't and have no reason to be, it makes me cry, however, they seem to have abandoned that now and we have the Jil that we all know and love. I'm actually finding this story really interesting now, because there seem to be sparks floating around between Fatina and Jil, and that makes me smile, but there is the complication of Kaaya and Neeba, which we all know will come into things later. That being said, the story still isn't out of the woods yet. If they get all the way to the top of the tower just to have the tower of light show up and then end up at the bottom of the tower all over again, I will cry as I give this show a score of 3 for story in my final review (which won't be for a few months since it is only episode 2 at the moment)

Opening: 4/5 Stars
While I don't mind this opening, I really miss the opening from Aegis of Uruk. I'm not sure if it was just the song (Swinging by Muramasa) that I absolutely loved about Aegis, or if it was the upbeat and incredibly light style that it took as a result.
Sword of Uruk still has a current day theme to it, like Aegis where you sort of watch it and go "Wait, but the story itself takes place in the past, doesn't it?" but something about Sword's opening just doesn't feel as good. Maybe it is the fact that the whole baseball scene makes pretty much no sense to me, since it seems to me that Jil strikes out, or maybe it is the fact that Aegis sort of did a transition into the fantasy aspect of it that gave you a better idea of what the series is about. I don't know. This was still a good one though, I'm just not sure that I'm going to watch through it every episode.

Audio: 5/5 Stars
Since I think that most of the reason that I docked the Opening for marks was because I miss Swinging, I'm not going to fault the audio for having an opening that I'm not wild about. This is helped a bit more by the fact that I don't really hate the opening theme. I'm really pretty much indifferent to it, and as long as they don't do something silly like bring it into the actual anime to add a bit more pop or something (we both know that anime sometimes does that because they are silly) that part of the audio will be okay. It also helps that this is a second season and as long as they bring back the same voice actors for the same characters (which they seem to have done) it isn't going to lose any marks. Again, the audio in the show does exactly what it is supposed to, it isn't distracting, and it helps with the flow, but something about the Tower of Druaga series is that it always makes me want to go looking for the soundtrack somewhere to see just what it is that is going on in the background that I don't notice because I'm so immersed in story.

BONUS ROUND:
Characters/Humor +1
Anything that I didn't like about the opening is quickly forgotten when I remember the way that everything seems to go with Utu. He wasn't all that much of a character in Aegis, and that made me a bit sad, because he had promise as a character. We never really figured out much about his back story, and we didn't even get to see what he looked like under that armor of his until Sword of Uruk started, and they seem to have taken note of that, are going into his character a bit more, and during all of that, making constant jokes about how no one has seen him under his helmet.

Slow Start -1
Sadly, something about the first episode seemed slow like it was being paced wrong or something. It's only been about 6 months since the last season ended, and while they advanced the time line by 6 months as well, and as a result a certain amount of catchup is necessary, something seemed incredibly slow and drawn out by the first episode. It felt like the first episode should have been the first half of an episode and the second episode should have been the rest of it. It seems to have picked up now though, so once you get past that first half of the first episode where things seem to be slow, things pick up rather nicely.

Overall Score: 4.75/5

I would suggest this to anyone who watched the first one. The slow start almost allows people who didn't watch the first one to jump into it, but really, you need the character development from Aegis to understand how everyone (Utu, Fatina, Jil) is connected, so you should probably watch Aegis first. They did do a rather good job of explaining Kelb's character and his connection with everyone.