In .2 I never made it out of the campaign due to how rough the game was to start that patch. I made it to Act 3 (normal) and just gave up and went and played other games. The good news is that in .3 I made it to level 89 on a Lightning Arrow Deadeye including completing a number of T15 maps. So the game seems much improved in many areas.
The Good
Asynchronous trading is a masterpiece. It really just makes things so much smoother in terms of upgrading and selling. The trade etiquette in PoE is still pretty strong but in PoE2 it was basically non-existent. So many people ignore trade requests making the system fail at every turn. Now, however, you don't have to deal with that issue at all, you just search then teleport to a hideout and buy what you want. They added an in game trade browser but since Exiled Exchange 2 exists it doesn't really help. The next step for that in game browser is to have a shortcut key to search things in game. Still nice to have, especially for console.
Progression seems much smoother now. I will be saying this a lot I am not sure how much of this is due to playing the most meta of meta skills. Probably factors in. Having enough damage just makes the game feel so much better. Not having to try bosses 20 times in the campaign makes for a better time. I was able to one shot most of the bosses in the campaign and ascend mostly painlessly. Never bothered to do my 4th ascension but it didn't matter.
Sprint is nice. It makes everything smoother in general and backtracking is not nearly as painful with sprint. As an aside the extra movement speed from my first ascendancy that gives Tailwind stacks also helps. Plus the right-side of the tree access to a lot of movement speed makes the campaign and game in general feel better. Once I got the Rhoa mount sprint didn't factor in but the extra speed on the tree plus Tailwind did.
Act 4 and the Interludes were very cool. This coupled with the removal of having to repeat Acts 1-3 again is just a win all around. Act 4 and the interludes are gorgeous and engaging. The newness factors in but it is easily my favorite part of the campaign. They also need to make sure to keep whatever is going on in the interludes as part of the game, which I think they already said they were.
Abyss mechanic is a lot of fun. Just tons of stuff to kill without having to chase anything all over the place. Monsters were a bit overtuned to begin with but the rewards are cool. The crafting related to this mechanic seems quite overpowered (didn't do much myself). Will be interesting to see how much they nerf it since you can do very high level crafts that are very deterministic.
The Bad
Campaign is still too long. Took me probably 21 hours. I did engage with Abyss quite a bit and probably left the client running from time to time but let's say 20 hours. That is too damn long. That is with the fastest character class as well. My PoE1 campaign was around 9-10 hours interacting with a ton of Mercs this league. That is completely reasonable for a non-twinked character. The campaign is better now without repeating Acts 1-3 but time is roughly similar. Some of these zones are just far too big and waypoints are useful but not in every situation.
Towers are not good. The method for juicing maps is cumbersome and not fun. Having to chase down multiple towers to get overlaps and optimize pathing to get to those towers without doing too many maps feels bad.
No completion. Technically you can complete your atlas tree points but it doesn't feel good compared with PoE1. Being able to strive towards finishing your atlas and atlas passive tree is basically perfect in PoE1. PoE2 needs to do something at least remotely similar. This is part of what makes the end game feel kind of pointless.
Maps suck. The layout of most maps is awful. Find someone who loves you like GGG loves a narrow passageway on a map. I can offscreen a decent amount of things but things can get bogged down at so many points. In PoE1 maybe most of the map layouts are bad as well but you don't have to run them unlike PoE2 where you just have to run whatever is put in front of you. Also, while the maps are pretty they lack the character of maps in PoE1. Like Mesa, that map rules and you can tell me what it looks like and how it plays without much though. Same for Canyon or Jungle Valley or Racecourse or any number of other maps. PoE2 is just an endless run of bad map layouts with the occasional good one.
Atlas tree I mentioned before but it is just undercooked and just a shell of what the Atlas tree in PoE1 is. This results in just a lack of choices in what you do in the end game. You have your base points then the tiny trees for each mechanic. Basically you just do whatever is on the map. It is much harder to narrow down to any one thing. Plus most of the layouts suck for like Breach or Delirium.
The wisp mechanic is bad and needs to go or be wildly revamped. Maybe just have a chance in a map to have x number of rares possessed by wisps or something. I am not sure but what it is now is not great.
Conclusion
Overall I had a lot of fun in .3 it was far more enjoyable than PoE2 at any other point. I think playing the fastest most meta skill and ascendancy really helped but it still counts as an improvement. The game still has a lot of work to do and I think some of the things it is doing don't work but it is just a .3 early access so a lot can change. I am looking forward to .4 and will give it another look hoping they improve it more. Until then I am waiting impatiently for PoE1 3.27.
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