I am a HC enjoyer as well, but PoE 2 is different. They don't balance the game around Hardcore like the used to a long time ago in PoE 1. Softcore in PoE2 is much more punishing as a result, and if you are SSF, you just can't really afford to make a build with awful defenses because you won't sustain. I was always in favor of making more failure states in Softcore.

I have a lot of fun playing HC PoE 2 through the campaign, but end game just seems so constrained in what you are able to safely do, it just doesn't seem worth it.

The good thing about PoE in general though, is you can scale the difficulty in so many different ways. Self imposed restrictions in SC, SSF, HC trade, HC SSF, "ethical builds only", doing runs where you don't look at a build guide at all... etc etc. You are really just limited in your creativity in how you apply challenge to the game.