Just my two cents

So I have played POE1 when it was in early access, it stopped playing when hitting the first boss I if I recall correctly. Mainly due to the difficulty, I did return to it year later and enjoyed half of the campaign, but stopped do it its bloated features and not much of tutorial about them in Game.

Now comes POE2, been playing since when it first came out. Enjoyed the campaign, however it feels it still has the same downfalls as the first one. Now I do like the gameplay in POE2, however the same is as follows.

The journey before hitting the boss is misguiding. It feels you create a build that melting the regular and rare mobs, but once you hit the main boss, it makes you feel that your gear and skills choices are not making any difference.

I played warrior up to the Viper in act 3 on normal, but had to reroll before I didnt enough cash to respec. So I rolled a merc and it melted through all the way to viper boss in a few days, to again being stumped by her, had to ask for help.

Now in brutal, my merc is doing find in the regular exploration, but hit one of the cemetery boss do fine for 50% of her life and I can output dmg due everything that is going in the fight. Bone walls, adds that reflect dmg if you hit on their shield, ghost mines.

Bottom point is that your progression can be misleading, I dont want to start on gear progression since it is whole other can of worms. If you need to rely on trading, which I didnt delve into but this was one of the #1 mistake D3 did at the start.

Agreed. Way too many campaign bosses are overtuned.