Oh wow, yeah, that’s massively different.
I remember my PoE main could go into a zone and just drop totems and summons that melted everything. But all the planning and building was the big job. The sequel sounds like a very different game. Different enough to be intriguing.
Yeah, it’s not a bad game by any stretch, just very different. During early access it’s not (yet) free to play, but they occasionally have free weekends — think you just missed the last one by a couple of weeks.
When the game launches for real, it will be free to play again (with paid cosmetics, as in PoE1).
The campaign isn’t finished yet (not all acts are in yet) and not all classes are available yet, but it’s still a good 20+ hours of gameplay already.
It’s probably worth checking out at some point, if only for the novel gameplay.