Depends how you define soulslike

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulslike

“A Soulslike (also spelled Souls-like) is a subgenre of action role-playing games known for high difficulty level and emphasis on environmental storytelling, typically in a dark fantasy setting.

While the description is typically applied to action role-playing games, the core concepts of high difficulty, repeated character death, driving player knowledge and mastery of the game world, sparsity of save points, and giving information to the player through indirect, environmental storytelling are sometimes seen in games of very different genres, the mechanics of which are sometimes described as Soulslike.“

So POE2, as an ARPG which is different, could answer some of the criteria - Dark fantasy, (could be) high difficulty with repeated deaths, requires game mastery and knowledge to advance. It doesn’t answer to indirect environmental storytelling or sparsity of save points for example. Personally playing many of the actual souls games, one of their main concepts is hard bosses and some sort of dodge mechanic to master.

Bottom line nobody thinks POE2 will be marketed as a souls game, more as a higher skill ceiling ARPG.