Not too far in, quickie impressions:
It seems their environment design for Fort Joy is following the JAM LOTS OF STUFF IN THERE school of thought. In Divinity that works reasonably but I kinda prefer the little more understated object placement of Cyseal. Overall it's an improvement though because all the objects have substantially more detail, texture resolution, and there's less repetition. I also like that you can now walk more structures and there are ladders and stairs and such all over. When modding D:OS 1 this was a huge pain in the ass so it should work a lot better in 2.
I'm reminded almost immediately how much I prefer the earlier Divinity lore to the post Divine Divinity lore of name off random names and gods no one knows what the hell they are method. It's not as bad here as it was in Divinity 2 but it's not that much better.
I think I've drilled down exactly why I dislike the this particular implementation of indirect dialog. When you're reading the indirect responses your brain is in a different mode of interpreting vs reading. The constant shift is jarring. It flows a lot better when the narrator is talking back to you vs lines of dialog from NPCs.
So far I've had 2 combats and both I won without even taking a hit. There were a few combats I avoided but it wasn't because it looked challenging, rather it just didn't seem prudent so in that respect its a good thing.
Writing wise I really like that so far NPCs don't seem to react exactly as you'd expect so you can't just mindlessly press the nice dialog option and expect happy results. The characters seem to have a ton more personality and react accordingly.
Corpses being lootable is nice as compared to D:OS 1 where their bodies just blasted items everywhere on death.
Alpha is alpha performance complaints:
Someone earlier mentioned that performance seems actually better in 2 than 1, well I've got the opposite experience but that's expected. Perhaps that person was comparing classic to 2, 2 does run better than classic.
All the item sounds seem bugged out or just really quiet, I can hardly hear them.
Anytime there's fire on the screen my FPS craters.
Not too big on the civil / combat split either.
I do at first glance like the attribute scale compared to D:OS 1, seems to have much more range in terms of point spread for a more granular approach. Though this seems a bit undermined by only getting 3 attributes in creation. Perhaps they were afraid of giving people too many choices to make since now you have tags/origins and such in addition to the old talents/abilities.
I also like to let my rogue teleport behind an enemy and backstab him. Critical backstabbing does crazy amounts of damage.
Codexers with a bit more time on their hands are monitoring the Steam and Larian feedback threads and countering any idiotic requests and complaints... like 
