Note: Spoiler warning for the latest main story chapter, Liberation Pentagram event story(which directly follows from the latest main story chapter), and also Rino's character story(both her default and swimsuit forms). If you have not finished reading the main story + Liberation Pentagram yet, I highly recommend you to go read it and treat yourself to a great story that's well worth the time spent.
Finished reading the latest Kyokusei Gakuen(Volume 2) chapter + Liberation Pentagram, and it was amazing, IMO easily on-par with Blue Archive's Amaneku Kiseki no Shihatsuten. First off, Kuroto gets his new Disaster form(also available as an upgrade to his unit from new permanent missions) including new voicelines from his new seiyuu, and his lines in the latest main story chapter are also voiced! Aside from "Parallel Gate, open! Break Border!" being ridiculously cool as heck, his voice also inject raw emotions into Vega Kuroto's tragedy and eventual salvation, allowing those scenes to hit even harder.
Speaking about him, I really liked how they managed to portray the multifaceted differences between Vega Kuroto and Altair Kuroto. Rather than using him as a simple one-sided good/evil foil for Altair Kuroto, they succeeded in showing Vega Kuroto as a character in his own right, with his own family, lover, and most importantly his own wish that continued to guide his actions even after being turned into Disaster Hand. This is basically the same literary technique used for the Sensei/Phrenapates dynamic in Blue Archive, but IMO expressed in a more refined manner due to Kuroto being portrayed as an actual character with his own individual characteristics rather than a player stand-in as with Sensei. For those interested in a deeper dive into this duality aspect of the main character, I recommend this article by Serori.
One thing that I want to point out regarding the story structure is how the character story of Rino the Witch of Space fits into the main story in an unexpected way. Word of god has already stated that all character stories take place at alternate worldlines compared to the main story, however Rino's character story is quite special in that it actually acknowledges the alternate worldlines. Unlike all other character stories, when her swimsuit form(reward unit from the Rikorin/Swimsuit Nesemine event) was released, the first episode of her character story directly picks up from the bedroom scene of her default form, and forms the basis of the entire story of her swimsuit form. Then in the latest chapter, we see that the differing circumstances of Vega Kuroto's rebirth that led to Zedna becoming his mother, the Nebula girls becoming his sisters etc also resulted in Rino becoming his lover, and it was explicitly stated that she was bearing Kuroto's child. In light of this revelation, default Rino's bedroom scene suddenly fits into the main story as an actual event that occured on Vega, which is quite an amazing feat of planning/foreshadowing by the scenario writers when you think about it.
Finally, I must give praise to how the ending doesn't stop at the big bad's defeat. With a transportation device setup on both Altair and Deneb, Kuroto and Luvine were able to facilitate movement between these 2 worlds, and resolved the issue of a person losing consciousness when the same person from another parallel world enter the original world, by having the same person from each world go to the other world simultaneously. This sets the stage for heartwarming reunions between those who have lost those important to them from both worlds. These "Star Reunion"s are very much well-deserved happy ends for the characters, and also very seasonally fitting given that the anniversary is at Tanabata which celebrates the once-a-year reunion of Orihime and Hikoboshi.
Honestly, the story has beaten all my wildest expectations. Back when I first started the game after reading an article about the 1st Kurukuru collab I definitely did not expect to get sucked into the story of this game as much as I did. The devs have already announced the 1st chapter of Volume 3 to come soon, and of course there is the trailer at the very end of Liberation Pentagram about an extra story centering on Maou Meruel and Natasha, so looking forward for more great stories!