If you look at the game as a stand alone rogue-lite, it is very fine and I recommend you try it out.

But if you have played Heroes of Hammerwatch 1, you will feel HoH2 really lacks the things that made the game unique in hoh1.

-A lot less trinkets
-Many of the upgrades in town are just stats upgrade
-The upgrade tree of your town now is gone, making you uncertain about what you want for the current stage
-The item system is not really neccesory, most of them are just stats stacking, which is not very fun to me
-We can"t start the game with any trinkets via the anvil nor the shop, with the new introduced in-game rogue-like elements, making the game very RNG based
-The new weapon slot given to the classes makes them a lot less unique to the other classes like in hoh1
-hoh1 every class had 7 abilities (4active+3passive), now we just have 4 based and 2 more for each mastery class. TBH, some of them arent really fun and the stat balancing should be paid more effort.
-AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHY DID YOU REMOVE THE COMMON ABILITY TREE OF CHAPEL IN HOH1 AND THE AMAZING FOUNTAIN THAT COULD ALTER THE GAME SO MUCH IN HOH1, WHY????

I loved HoH1 and I got all the DLC for it, grind many hours into it but I have to say, HoH2 does not meet my expectations.

Some way of improving the game in my opinion:
-Add back the old chapel and fountain (Plz)
-Add banish/reroll/lock/ for the ability orb (Cause I dont really want to see useless upgrades (yes the combo skills))
-Add more content to the item system, maybe give some items class-specific attribute (e.g. X-shaped firewall, bounceable electro ball)
-Just copy some classes from hoh1, all of them are really well-designed already (with 7 skills)
-Add more trinkets, higher rarity of them (Just copy from hoh1)

That"s about it for now, I can see the devs are giving an update every two days and I hope this gets to them, really look forward to see what this game could be.

I was really enjoying this game, leveling different characters and kind of just collecting everything i could get my hands on. my highest level character is a level 17 rogue. and then the third patch came out and i feel kind of cheated. I spent time specifically leveling up the rogue for more gold gain as a way to buffer leveling up alts while I played with new friends who might buy the game later and progress alongside them while mitigated a little bit of the grind associated with that. and now they changed the passive buff to less trap damage, which is nice but its not even really that noticeable and in multiplayer it was mostly just one player with the most dashes doing the traps and the others would decide based on what was at the end if it was worth it. I am actually pretty upset with this change.

At its current state, I can"t recommend this game to people I know.
For context, I"ve completed Hammerwatch 2, HoH. I"ve beaten the game with all classes (not subclasses) on at least NG+2 in HoH2. I"ve tried all subclasses. I"ve tried multiplayer.

There is no tutorial for this game. Early on, you likely do not know what stats do what (character sheet -> info). You"ll most likely die before you unlock another set of skills (unlocked at level 10, you only get 2 skills). Your gameplay would be almost identical to your first run if you continued with that character. This leads to wanting to try something new (class or different game).

Now the meat of the game. I had these gripes with the game at all times. To put it broadly, the game is not balanced. A lot of it feels like place holder numbers. I will be listing them in this block of text.

Spells range from really weak (sorcerer"s firewall, base 50 dmg every .5s) to extremely overpowered (warlock"s rift, potential 60 * 7 * 7 [2940] dmg every .25s with 100% uptime). Upgraded skills scale way stronger than weapons (until you"re a high enough new game+), so you equip weapons that help your spells.
The main two stats you need to worry about is mana regeneration (focus stat, rejuvenation prefix) and max health (vitality stat) as they scale way harder than every stat.
Equipment can get enchantments. Most enchantments are almost completely useless and some are directly better than another. Mana regen and max health prefixes get outclassed by their stat counter parts (focus and vitality).
Equipment have rarity, tiers, and stat requirements to equip them. Each tier makes the requirement +1.5x(?) with between no pay off (+1% crit chance, +5 flat armor) or something reasonable (+10% crit damage, -5% spell cost reduction). This doesn"t sound too bad until you realize that strength armor gives way more armor than everything else with the only problem being the tiered up armor at level 20+ requiring strength, the worst scaling stat in the game (+1 armor).
Getting optimized armor is almost impossible unless you reroll the map for blueprints (allows you to change the prefixes on your armor) or/and rerolling your shop (go to equipment store -> start a run -> abandon it -> repeat).
The glorified menu of a town is really annoying to navigate to. I have to spend at max, 8 seconds every time I want to go from 1 UI to another (max base speed, dashes).
The game relies too heavily on meta progression. After a few runs, I have not gotten a piece of equipment midway that I felt like it had impact. When I see an equipment chest, I ignore them. Once you have a complete set of optimized equipment, you can pass that equipment to other characters and steam roll the new game+ they are on.
Decisions mid-run mostly do not matter. You have to hope you get trinket sets (+3 spell power based on a stat is a common one that auto wins you the game) or the orb upgrades that scale way harder than everything else (3x traps, 2 more projectiles from 5).
Some orb upgrades for spells should should be on by default (placement of firewall, decision on what element to make sorcerer"s first skill be). They should not require an orb slot to function as a usable spell.
Damaging item trinkets are in the game, but they won"t scale off your own stats, so they"re all useless (shoutout to the worst item in the game, caltrops).
Trinkets are overall uninteresting. They"re mostly an increase in stats and with some having another trinket for their spell/weapon counter part.
Resources for your town/equipment progression is imbalanced. Early on, you always want stone since the game chucks out so much wood. Later on, you"ll complete your town in a few completed runs and have access to enchanting. You need crystals to enchant. Crystals are obtainable from having trinkets and ending a run with them (win or lose). They always give the same amount. The higher the level, the more crystals you need. Level 30+ equipment would require at least half a full run"s worth of crystals to enchant, and that"s for 1 piece. You"re going to be farming Dark Citadel or rerolling your shop for the right equipment.
Weapons are the placeholder items. The only interesting ones are dual daggers and the strength crossbow. To categorize every other weapon, they will have an oversight and most of them are bad. Staves don"t scale off spell power, leading to no damage (same problem with tomes). The dual wield axe"s M2 doesn"t allow you to cast spells without cancelling it. With how bad the weapons are, you equip them based on the amount of stats they give.
Connecting to someone online is finicky. You have to wait a minute before joining a lobby that just been made. You will sometimes have your data rolled back to the point of when you just came out of your run, requiring you to redo micromanagement of the town.

I will add more if I think of another gripe I had while playing the game.

There are still bugs in the game. This will be a list of the bugs I"ve found. They range from literally unplayable to small.

The final boss will teleport outside the map until it somehow gets damaged below its next phase (somebody has to rejoin, hit the boss, and be stuck out of the map, not giving them their new game+). This happened twice to me. I genuinely thought about quitting on the second time.
If you"re getting pushed around by enemies and dash into the corner of a wall, you can clip into a wall and be stuck (forced to quit, don"t hit abandon).
Rejoining a map with a blueprint doesn"t allow you to pick up the blueprint.
Sorcerer"s affinity passive triggers the affinity first and then checks the damage.
Upgrading warlock"s drain essence doesn"t upgrade it (still takes your stars).
Rogue"s toxic cloud will disappear if you place another one even if the duration isn"t over (to those who say it"s not a bug, look at firewall, a similar lingering spell).
Rogue"s evasion can be triggered from your own attacks and sometimes from your allies (I don"t know the cause, it just does).
Warlock"s soul vortex can"t be stacked if you have enough cooldown reduction.
You can swap to a subclass with no invested stars, respec your skills, and it"ll take the required resources for that class you swapped to while respeccing all your skill points.

I had fun playing with others and trying out other characters. Did it out value the amount of things I went through? No. I expect this game to get the HoH treatment and have the first year rough out the edges.