For what it's worth, I'm enjoying it. About midway? through Act 2.
Let's see....
People are probably going to hate this. But I feel like POE2 is more Soulslike than PoE1.
It comes down to three things that make me say this: the presence of active blocking/dodging mechanics, the boss fights and the stun mechanic (which is basically posture from the souls games.)
POE1 boss fights kind of sucked. Enemies didn't telegraph their big attacks very well, and you were CONSTANTLY at risk of a one-shot due to crits.
PoE 2 boss fights are just flat out better so far. The bosses are all unique. They all have good animations. They telegraph their attacks well. They have a variety of things they do. And most importantly, it's about pattern recognition. They consistently do attack patterns that you can learn and avoid AND how you can avoid it is largely fair. TBF there is a lot going on with boss fights besides that. There's tons of area denial stuff like creep on the ground. There's sometimes as many as three phases and two life bars per boss. There are gimmicks. There are adds. But all in all, the boss fights feel fair compared to PoE 1's animation-light, excessive single hit damage boss fights where you'd go from full life to dead and get demoralized. These feel like something you can learn rather than battles of attrition.
Bosses have some regular melee attacks, a host of special AoE attacks and then a few unblockable attacks you really want to avoid. The regular attacks, playing as Warrior, almost dont even register. You can face tank them without issue until something you have to avoid comes up.
That said there's a bit of an issue, at least for melee, where you just don't get to do damage that often because you're dodging and avoiding so much. So boss fights can take a little while solo, especially if DPS isn't your priority.
Still, I've enjoyed each boss fight thoroughly and felt good by the end of it, even if I died multiple times.
The dodging and blocking also go a long way toward making fighting over all feel more engaging. Instead of just blasting your best one button attack forever and hoping no one hits you, you're encouraged to try different things and stay mobile. It's not quite kiting, but it's definitely not face tanking either.
On the content front, the three acts feel pretty meaty. That's not my issue. My issue is the lack of skill gems and gear. There just isn't enough variety out there right now. There are just straight up no swords in game, at all, nor spears, axes, daggers....melee is basically blunt weapons and quarter staves. And since there's no skill gems for weapons that aren't in game, there just isn't much to choose from right now. That's a pretty big disappointment. I agree with the rest of you that there isn't enough gear in game by half. You're desperately looking for new upgrades because the game simply doesn't drop enough, because there aren't enough items nor item levels to work with yet. There aren't enough different kinds of weapons to choose from within a given weapon class, so you're stuck using the same weapon for half an act because the game hasn't dropped a higher tier of it yet. Rings and amulet drops are also very rare. The game's pretty stingy with currency drops and yellows too. Maybe I'm channeling too much of the PoE 1 late game loot bonanza, but I'm still picking up whites to sell for gold because there's just not much else TO pick up.
On the one hand it's kind of good because upgrades feel like real improvements and you're interacting with the crafting system more often as you level to get upgrades. It feels very Lvl 1 D&D. On the fiip side though, so few things qualify as an upgrade that there isn't much new except skill gem drops and level ups to actually increase your effectiveness as you're playing.
And there's just not that much side content either, the thing PoE is kind of famous for. Sure, there were a couple Delirium altars in Act 1, but I only got to interact with the Delirium altar once and I can't seem to do it again? And there are a few Essence spawns (they cut the # of essence types down by 75%!). But other than that.....? There's fuck all optional content. There aren't even any chest caches, which blows my mind. One of the easiest pieces of side content to implement and it's just straight up not in game yet. Very few side dungeons as well, opting for "field bosses" instead in most cases. Hell, there aren't even any basic buff shrines!
The level generation also seems less random. That, or there are more fixed set pieces in it so there's less flexibility to randomize around. Areas feel smaller than in PoE 1 which I'm kind of thankful for. But there isn't much in them, which starts to make their size feel like a detriment rather than a benefit. There aren't half as many chests or breakables or any of that in the levels. I'll be lucky to find more than 5 or 6 chests per area, and many of those are white ones that are empty.
The jury is still out on the skill gems. Part of me likes what the rework is going for, part of me doesn't. It's simpler now. You get uncut skill gems and then choose a new skill to create from them. Rather than the actual skill dropping as a gem. But they're ALL grouped under weapons. There's maybe 15 blunt weapon skills, that range from attacks to Warcries. Rather than having an attack like Double Strike that can go on anything, skill gems seem designed around weapons first, application second. Which makes the whole system seem like it has fewer possibilities. I'm kind of reminded of Diablo 3's design, actually. While the system is easier to wrap your head around, it feels like there's fewer cooler things you can do with it.
The support gem design is also kind of underwhelming. Again, you get blank support gems then 'cut' a new one from among the weapon offerings. Each tier of support gem offers three skills. And once created, you can more or less freely assign that support gem to any skill which it will support. The rub comes in that they're socketed into skills, and how many sockets are available is based on the level of skill gem. It's simpler to figure out what you can put in and how to connect it, but they lost the ability to say that this gem connects to this gem to achieve X effect. Now, all support gems just "work" with a given skill. It's a slicker system but again it feels like there are fewer options. Lastly, it appears you can't socket the same support gem more than once anywhere. So if you want to, for example, use Overwhemling on multiple skills, you just straight up can't. Which feels intentionally limiting and I don't like it. Basically you can socket each support gem only once, forcing you into more diversity rather than using what's most effective. Time will tell on this one I suppose. But again, my first instinct was "oh. These passives support gems are more like Diablo 3's "Runes" than PoE's support gems." Someone thought of a cool idea instead of giving you the elements to assemble a cool idea yourself. Instead of giving you gems that can potentially modify every aspect of a skill, the scope of support gems seems narrower. But I may not have spent enough time with the system yet, and again, when more than half the weapons and their skill gems are marked as "coming soon" we don't have the full picture of it yet.
The Passive Tree is also a mix of better and worse. The better part is that most attribute nodes let you freely assign what stat they increase. So no more "oh noes, I need 5 Int on the strength side of the tree." So it's easier to get the attribute points you need to support what you're doing without spending egregious amounts of passive points to reach a part of the tree that has what you need. There's also almost no +maximum life on the tree, or chaos resistance. Straight elemental resistances also seem downplayed in the tree. They're pushing most of that off on to gear now, what with Runes being able to be socketed into gear to make up for missing resistances, stats, life, etc.... So there's less "oh gosh I have to spend passive skill points for basic survivability in the tree" than PoE1. The tree feels less intimidating AND less load-bearing in the new design.
On the flip side...man the keystone passives are just kind of boring compared to PoE1. There are still some of the recognizable ones like "do more damage/never crit" etc... but very few of them seem to really change gameplay that much, and very few of the major keystone passives are "sexy." In PoE1 I'd agonize about what nodes were worth it for my build. But in PoE2 most options seem to be the same level of vanilla. Put another way, there's very little at the outer edge of the Passive Skill tree that makes me go "oh yes, I want that." So every time I go to the skill tree to decide where to spend points, I'm often left feeling like it doesn't matter as much as it used to. My friends and I used to joke while playing that when someone leveled up we had to pause for "life choices." The choices don't seem nearly as consequential in PoE2.
The story is....meh. While there's lots of voice acting I think the setting just isn't as compelling. Wraeclast as an island of criminals that happens to be polluted by an ancient evil was something I could get behind. PoE2's story is basically the same thing, except without all the trappings of savagery and cannabilism. It basically looks like generic fantasy now, with GGG's sort of grimdark aesthetic. Which is fine, except I already played Diablo 4 and this doesn't do much to stand out from it. Act 2, which is of course a desert act, starts off strong with your "home town" being a moving caravan but other than that it's bbbbbbblllllllaaaaaaannnnnnnndddddd. I'm already missing Act 1's forests and fields.
I've said it once but I'll say it again, Rolling Slam just feels bad to use because of it being a two-part slam attack with a really long animation commitment. Aside from spamming earthquake and totems to trigger jagged ground aftershocks you don't really get any alternate crowd clearing skill until the magma throw skill mentioned earlier.
This is also one of my complaints. Not that Rolling Slam takes a long time. But because the whole "Heavy Stun" mechanic is the ONLY way I'm dealing real damage. Rolling Slam will get most guys ready to Heavy Stun with one hit, then I finish them with that other attack and they die. When it works, it clears the screen. When your timing is off or something isn't working though, suddenly, I feel like I'm doing no damage and have no ability to clear.
And when doing boss fights it gets even less optimal. You have to build their stun bar up to a certain point where you can use your finisher attack, just as normal. Except because of all the fruity stuff bosses like to do, like becoming invulnerable while a gimmick is happening, you miss that window. Or because of all the constant dodging you need to do, it takes forever to fill up their stun bar because it requires so much more stun AND it's draining while you're trying not to take damage. Or a teammate does an attack which pushes their stun over the max and you LOSE YOUR CHANCE TO DO YOUR BEST DPS. Part of me is liking the idea of combos as a way to bridge the gap between raw DPS output for ranged and melee. But then shit like this comes up and it feels like melee is once again getting dicked over, compared to someone just spamming ranged elemental damage.
I'm really hoping other builds aren't one trick ponies like this. Without the Heavy Stun mechanic and combo off of one ability, my guy would be doing fuck all for damage. It's the only way I'm able to clear out swarms of guys, It'd take half a dozen earthquakes to do the same damage as one appropriately timed finisher. Basically if my ability to fight effectively relies on a single combo that is balanced by other factors, then most other skills are kind of useless by comparison. Why would I use Earthquake when it takes let's say 10+ seconds to kill a group of trash mobs vs. 3 seconds with Rolling Slam/whatever the finisher is called. I can clear whole packs with two abilities when it works correctly, which is far less effort than almost all other abilities....until you suddenly can't get them to stun for one reason or another. (Also the stun cooldown puts another limiter on how often you can get good damage out of the Heavy Stun combo. Having to wait for their stun bar to "go back to normal" means you're sitting there hitting them for mediocre damage until they're ready to have their stun bar built back up to do real damage....ugh. Not a fan.)
I'm hoping this is a consequence of 80% of the previous game's skill gems not being in PoE 2 yet. And not a preview of how we can expect the next 5 years of this game to be. Where we wait for GGG to release a new skill because there aren't enough available ones to make for interesting builds and combos. It almost seems like they're starting at square 1 again.
TLDR: gameplay-wise it feels like an improvement over PoE1. Mechanically it's been simplified and while in some places that's a good thing, combined with the lack of content in an EA release makes it feel like a lesser game. Which, following up your content rich decade-old game with an EA release, that's going to happen.
I just feel like they're behind the gun. Or to put it another way, they released in EA not because it was ready but because they needed to start getting paid.
Sort of how like in PoE1, actually getting unique models for all the uniques they had in game was an "on-going project", PoE2 is going to be saddled with numerous "on-going projects." From converting PoE 1 skills to PoE 2, to converting all the uniques, league mechanics, stash tabs and cosmetics, GGG is going to back filling PoE 2 for years. And as we know, that is always going to take a backseat to making content people will pay for. I'm a little worried that it's going to take this game years to get back to what PoE1 was, and we're going to hear a lot of "don't worry, we're working on that!" from the dev team.
So if you're a fan of PoE1 and all its variety....definitely wait or you're going to constantly run into "why isn't this in EA yet" feelings with PoE2. I'm enjoying my experience a lot but there's just not a ton of meat on its bones compared to PoE1.