General feedback: meh.

First, the good things:



- Moment to moment gameplay is fantastic. I'm a gameplay first guy, so this is one of the most important things.

- Graphics and sound are very good, the game runs better than PoE1 for me, eventhough it looks prettier. I guess because there is less going on.

- I love Alva.

- The boss fights are mostly well designed (except the forgemaster guy) and look cool.



Now the bad things, the worst at the top:



- Too little loot. Talking mostly about currency here. I can not craft items because there is no currency dropping (except transmutes and augs). My first alchemy orb dropped at lvl 66, in my second map.

- The new ascendancy trials are so bad I can not put it into words.

- Why do all monsters respawn if I die? And even worse, why does the loot despawn? I'm fine with bosses resetting, but this is not Dark Souls.

- Why cant we remove runes?

- During the campaign, the areas are too big. I resorted to running along the outer edge of every area just so I eventually hit the exit. Thinking about leveling another char makes me want to do *anything* else than playing PoE2.

- The gem system is not great. Why cant we downlevel gems? Why cant we cut gems for which we dont fulfill the requirements? Why are gem levels so heavily gated behind random drops? The gem cutting UI looks too game-y and disjointed from the rest. There are too many restrictions and downsides for which support gems can work with which skill gems.

- Why are all melee skills limited to one weapon type? What's the difference between smashing a guy with a mace or an axe? I feel like every skill is so limited that every melee build will feel the same. Maybe this will solve itself when more gems and supports are released.

- The passive tree has too many traveling nodes (the +5 to attribute ones).

- Respecing is too expensive, especially early on.