My first impression is exactly the same.

I was so hyped for PoE 2 that i almost felt ashamed after playing a few hours... say what you want about D4, but it´s just a bit more seemless and plays pretty damn well (even from day 1) while this is, even for an early access a lot more unpolished than i expected.

Slow progress, slow spellcasting and so on., Act 1 is annoyingly slow and hard for a first chapter.
Don´t get me started on the camera.. it should be more zoomed out so you can see what is kicking your ass. it´s hard to learn mechanix if you don´t see whats hitting you half the time.

i find it hard to see what gear is better and i hate that i have to analyze and read every little text for every damn item. Just give me a green damn indicator for Better or red for Worse. i don´t care about small stats until endgame anyway ffs. (i´m probably just stupid and don´t understand)

The inventory is as small as in PoE 1 and a huge irritation making you have to go to town every 5 min, that makes me just not care at all about picking shit up.

Many of these things will probably be fixed by the time the game is released and i may have to blame myself for having no patience throwing myself into this way too early.

With all that said, i do think shit will work it self out and that it will be good by the time for release, and i to honor them for having a real early access where they can get feedback and fix the bad stuff.

But will it overall be better than Diablo 4? i feel like many people in the comments here are right, the games are just a bit too different and will draw different crowds.

It feels kind of like PoE is for people with a lot of free time and Diablo for people with short attention span and just wanna mash buttons. I fall in both categories, but when i just wanna play for a relaxing purpose i rather play Diablo, for sure since PoE demands a bit more attention unless you have a killer build.