I've been deliberately staying away from the PoE II beta (I'm a backer), unwilling to expose myself to any element of the game before its release.
Discussions of RPG heritage and genre purity aside, I quite enjoyed the first game on PotD difficulty (including the expansion and all of the side content). How do the game systems hold up currently? I ask because throughout the Beta I've had questions about whatever it was Sawyer was thinking. I read about combat (especially spellcasting) being slowed down, I can't intuit/grok the benefit of the Penetration system, and I think the ability pools and level up options for all classes are narrower than before. All of these changes seem to me like excellent ways to mess with a working formula, and I've been hesitant about the sequel for this reason. Any beta players, especially PotD players, want to chip in?
My biggest complaint when the first beta dropped was the loss of general talents. They've added back in a lot of talents and passives from the first game, so that has helped some, but on the whole character creation feels stream-lined compared to the first game. At each level you have two or three choices and the rest are filler. Because the talents are tiered, you end up picking trash that you probably would have skipped over in the first game. For multiclass characters, it's even worse as you'll have 3 or 4 talent points to spend at one tier. In terms of total number of options, loss of general talents vs introduction of multiclassing is a wash as far as I'm concerned. I would have enjoyed it more if they had kept the talent system from the first game and introduced multiclassing at the same time. You have a lot of choices, but you could have had so many more.
Spell casting is slower, but there is also the issue of limited spell cast / encounter and limited spell choice (Druids and Priests mainly - they no longer get every spell for their power level) on PotD. The stat bloat and increase in number of monsters means that you will likely use all spells before the end of the encounter and will be whipping out your wand for the last half unless you use empowers (don't get me started here). Ciphers and chanters have some advantage since their resources renew over damage or over time. One of the modders (MaxQuest) on the Obsidian boards reduced the cast times in his mod, and it looks like Obsidian has adopted some of the changes. The most recent beta update plays more fluidly than early versions IMHO.
Early on there was a big disparity between power output from multiclass characters vs single class, but it seems like single class has caught up some since they gave them an equal number of talent points and fixed a bug where multiclass were getting extra talent points.
Armor Penetration is less harsh that it was early on with a 0.75/0.5/0.25 multiplier for each point you are under instead of a flat 0.30 multiplier for being below the threshhold. You will need multivariable calculus to optimize your weapon selection and armor choice in Deadfire.
In my estimation, they have messed with the formula a bit much, and it was frightening to see them make major changes in mechanics late in development, like the STR vs MIG and alterations to the way RES works.
The beta is in a better place than it was 4 or 5 months ago, but I'm still not convinced I will enjoy PoE 2 as much as I enjoyed PoE.