Ziz Gauntlet actually made campaign enjoyable

I personally felt the campaign was actually fun in the gauntlet (never made it to mapping). I hate hardcore and never want to do it again, but the campaign challenge was satisfying. I always over-leveled to a reasonable degree for every boss and sacrificed damage for more survivability. I actually had to pay attention against bosses and some uniques, though that was mainly attributed to hardcore. Plus, re-fighting all the uniques before the final act boss pretty cool.

It felt like PoE2 v0.1 launch when I knew nothing and went through the campaign blind and also PoE2 v0.2 when the campaign still had some long lasting boss fights that I had to play well to beat.

Compare this to my first PoE1 league v3.25 running through the campaign and half falling asleep around Act 6 and losing a lot of interest at the start of maps (when I didn't know what the endgame entails).

Just voicing my appreciation for some challenges at the start of the game instead of only at the end of mapping. I don't expect them to make campaign harder and I definitely wouldn't want to run through the gauntlet every league given how long the campaign is already (not a speedrun expert). It would be nice to have an option to run campaign gauntlet for some extra useful rewards or a time-saving reward like maybe skipping directly to red maps if you beat campaign gauntlet.

Nice concept to give the old bosses new flavour on top of the usual private league difficulty mods. Uber Hillock got my by surprise also A4 Malachai.

A4 Malachai + A9 fused-doedre where roadblocks for me and needed to port the most there. I was also SRS but (non poison) hit based and had to respec to (Vaal) Absolution to shred A9 boss. Was fun tho and rewarded farming.

More such events at mid league would be fun.