I've finished the game - took me about 30 hours, died 74 times (died the most to Little Johnny, 7 times). Was using staff at first and punching gloves later, and wearing 3 parts Nano ward + 3 parts Iron Maus sets. Implants for directional blocking.
Overall it's a definite step up from the the first Surge, but there is still a room for improvement.
Metroidvania elements are barely noticeable since the game is still quite linear - there are only 2 or 3 places you had to revisit in order to utilize your newly acquired Starfish drone module, force hook and lifter hooks are used for shortcuts for the most parts, and ability to break nanite barriers was used to limit your progression. I would've liked non-linearity to be expanded in a possible sequel - sequence breaking, hidden loot, opportunity to skip certain bosses or fight them in a different order. I understand that the game is linear because balancing a proper difficulty curve is hard, and having a lot of backtracking in a game with lengthy loading screens will be frustrating for players, but still. Dark Souls had a big non-linear interconnected world without loading screens and without locking upgrade materials behind enemy gear, so it's possible.
Unlike other posters, i wasn't a big fan of level design. It felt appropriate for maps to be small, cramped and interconnected in a Surge 1 since it was just a facility, but Surge 2 is set in an open city and it feels kinda tacky. Every location loops back to OPS three or four times - combined with rather bland and sterile art it makes navigation a chore, especially on revisit. There are a lot of secrets, but 90% of the time you find a pile of scrap.
Both Surge games (and Lords of the Fallen) suffer from quantity over quality issue: there are too many weapons with barely any difference between them. This new hammer have 5% more damage and 5% less energy gain than that old hammer, wow, so different, much interesting, almost build-worthy. Instead of having so much garbage weapons, i'd rather cut a half of them, and make others more distinct - maybe add special bonuses (like set bonuses, except for just 1 weapon). For example, this hammer deals more damage to robots, but less to humans. Or that staff gives you more i-frames for directional blocking. Or those double-duty weapon heal you a little upon dealing a backstab. Another problem with weapons is that a little thought was put into designing movesets - animations are great, but in the end they barely matter except from rather primitive comboing or occasional need to do horizontal attacks instead of vertical (or vise versa) to cut someone's limb more efficiently. You can create a separate Axe weapon class from hammer animations without losing much.
Same with implants. I liked how devs reassigned HP/Stamina/Battery from implants to attributes, but there's more that can be done. Currently there are too many implants, and a lot of them are either useless (some health healed after performing a finishing sequence? if i'm low on health i'd rather use battery for actual healing injection instead of doing a finisher), or too sawyeristic in their effects (+5% damage to drone if fired continuously? +4% attack speed while 3 batteries are filled? It's fucking nothing). Weaker or less unique implant effects should be relegated to weapons/gear, repeated implants (like Ancillary core, Reclamation buddy and all elemental resistances) should be made upgradeable instead.
Halfway through the game I started to feel that my character doesn't progress. I already had an armor set and implants i was comfortable with, upping core-level gave me no benefits except for minuscule health/stamina/battery bonus. Imo, this problem can be solved by tying Core power and Implant slots into separate attributes (and maybe adding another attributes for drone damage?). Want to wear heavier armor - invest your level-up points into Core power, want to equip more implants - invest your level-up points into additional slots. You want to be a tank? Invest into Health and Core power. You want to build your character around injections? Invest into Battery and Implant slots.
Some of those problems stem from a small budget and dreaded technological limitations (c), so I hope they will be fixed in their next game (dunno whether it'll be The Surge 3, personally i hope for Venetica 2 - Electric boogaloo). Props to devs for having a proprietary engine in 2019 and not buying unreal.