Overall feel of the game, feedback

I'm sorry if I'm hard to understand; I'm dyslexic and a bit autistic, and, like more than half of the people here, English is my second language.

I never played the endgame of PoE 1 or PoE 2. I'm writing this while playing on the second difficulty with a level 51 Frost Stormweaver Sorceress build, and I feel that there's no big difference between PoE 1 and PoE 2 in terms of the feeling of the game. In some instances, I think it's a downgrade, e.g., the death animation of enemies, and there is no real difference between elites and normal monsters before a fight starts. I think in PoE 1, elites were a much clearer distinction.

I played PoE 1 around its beta; I don't remember exactly when, but it was after I finished the campaign of Diablo 3. Back then, there were only the first three acts, and I quit around level 51 with a Witch (not because of the game’s fault, but because I got into other games). Recently, I replayed all the story of PoE 1, and I loved the feeling of the first 3-5 acts. Rank-and-file monsters die quickly, while elites require a bit of kiting, and bosses feel good to fight (I even think bosses need a slight buff so you’re forced to do a bit more mechanics). However, after Act 4-5, the game throws so many enemies at you, and you're forced to play an efficient/broken build just to 1-2 shot them. If you don’t, it becomes a problem, and bosses become a one-shot joke. The whole feel after Act 4-5 is that the difficulty is in dealing with the mobs before the boss, but the boss itself is a joke to kill.

In my opinion, PoE 2 has the same identical problem after Act 1. At the beginning of Act 2, you're forced to look up builds and use the trade system to buy better gear.

For a game that's supposed to be Souls-like, the difficulty isn't in the bosses but in the rank-and-file monsters before you reach the boss. Even in Souls-like games, after you die, you still receive loot and have a chance to recover your souls. In PoE, after you die, the map resets, and you lose all loot on the ground.

In my opinion, there should be fewer monsters on the maps, and the difficulty should shift to the bosses rather than the mobs. The game's speed should be at least half of what it is now. If not, I don’t really get why PoE 2 didn’t just replace PoE 1, as it's almost the same game.

Myself and other players started PoE 2 with the promise that it would be Souls-like—slow and strategic—but the closer I get to the endgame, the more it just feels like the rest of the ARPGs: "Gotta go fast" across the maps to the boss and 1-shot him as efficiently as possible.