Quick Feedback

For context, I'm mainly SSF with a bunch of time in PoE1. Not exactly casual, but I don't put hundreds of hours into a league.

I don't much care about the small stuff; I was curious whether there would be anything in 2 for SSF players, starting with how much content would be accessible on builds that weren't meta and optimized by mega-grinding.

Since there hasn't been much post-campaign content to speak of I'll just say that, in 0.1, I got to T15 w/o too much grinding - but on a meta build. Similar to 1, and not what I was looking for.

The 0.1 campaign had its challenges for non-meta SSF (I tried a few) so I was curious how 0.2 would be. At launch, I was telling casual friends that they should wait and see. With 0.2 I can safely tell them not to bother.

For a little more 0.2 feedback…
I'm playing a solid build that is not meta. Still SSF.
Drops have been fairly typical, so I have very scuff gear. (No point talking about crafting. I do what I can and it's not enough.)
I appreciate fixing the bosses so they're hard enough you actually need to learn them, but the fights are just too long.
For starters, every boss requires adjusting gear to remove unneeded resists and add dps. This is fine for pinnacle but not for campaign.
And I've died enough times that I know the fights.
But I'm an old guy. In a five minute fight with a lot of dangerous moves and combos, there's a good chance I'm going to fat finger at some point when I'm dodging a one-shot for the tenth time.
So despite having fight knowledge and a bit of skill, I feel like my boss kills normally come down to luck.

I'll keep going to see how far I can get but, if this is the direction, 0.2 will be the end of the road for me. And I certainly couldn't recommend it for anyone even remotely casual.

Wishing you all the best. There are a lot of things to love about the game, but the target demographic seems to be even narrower than with 1.