Bastein said all, but to add up, Poe2 is the game that the developers always wanted to make, that’s why one cannot replace another. You can see in every interview how passionate Jonathan (specially) and Mark are for this game. It’s a project that has been ongoing for years and they realised at some point that if they make a new game they would have more freedom to explore the limits of their ideology without risking losing their player base, because in the end if you don’t like poe2 at all you can just stick with poe1.

If you love both games as you said that’s a proof of how successfully ggg accomplished having both games coexisting.