First impressions after a couple hours:
-They're on their story game. I thought the Prologue was pretty cool. The Shadow Bridge or whatever is a nice, sensible explanation for how the party can globe trot across the Empire for different missions and locales.
-The audio quality and VOs seem to be on par with the first game, but I dunno, the VOs seem to be a little less noticable. Might just be all the newness.
-Game runs smooth on my machine on high settings, and I haven't noticed any egregious network issues yet.
-It's the same core gameplay as the first game, with an additional mini-faction worth of enemies added into the mix.
-Several new units for the skaven too. Warpfire thrower, Plague Rat Priests? Modified Rat Ogre.
-Special Rats seem a lot less common in the first game. By contrast, there seem to be way more elite units on average per level.
-Map design seems in the same ballpark as the previous game. I.e. fairly well done, mostly an interesting looking corridor design with periodic "arena" sections and the occasional split path.
-It's cute how the castle hub gets cleaned up and expands as you complete more missions.
-The fighting is about the same, although I'm still getting used to what VT expects again. Seems a little harder to avoid damage from swarms that you're facing head on, but again that may just be my newness.
-More weapons with more subtlety to them. For example, I only play Krueber and I only used the two-handed sword in VT1. In VT2, there are at least two kinds of two handed sword (greatsword and executioner sword types) that I've seen so far. The Executioner's sword is great for spamming light attacks in to crowds, and using charged attacks on a single target. However its charged attack pattern is not good for crowds, nor is it's light attack good for single targets. By contrast, the greatsword has the a great power attack swing for attacking crowds, which is how I remember the 2 handed swords working for Krueber in VT1. It's light attack is also decent at crowd control but no where near as good as the Executioner's sword. But, unlike the Executioner's sword, the two-handed sword can do both a vertical and horizontal power attack, making it fairly versatile for both crowds and single targets. On the other hand, the Executioner's sword gets a straight bonus to headshot damage, making it ideal for taking out big targets. Two different weapons in the same class of weapon type that have strengths and weaknesses in each area. And that's just two weapon types out of the dozens in the game.
-The AI seems.....semi-competent? At least on recruit difficulty. I did two missions alone before I tried some quickplay, and by contrast my runs with the bots went way smoother. But the game may also throttle a lot of things if you're running with bots. Still, they didn't seem stupid, stick to you like glue, and actively attack instead of just block all day like in VT1.
-The loot system is a little more straightforward this time around. No more "how many faces on the die have stuff that's good" yadda yadda crap. It's all a points based system now. Mission complete + heroes alive + loot dice + tomes + grimoires + ranald's gift all come out to a point total which affects the level of the loot box you get. And then you get three drops from that loot box whose rarity is dictated by the level of the loot box.
-This is not a P2W game, but jesus does it present like one. The looting screen is full of pointless "Gee whiz!" loot box animations and takes forever to get through. Maybe mashing buttons helps.
-Character progression certainly is more gamey now, what with Character Levels unlocking new weapon blueprints, talent points and such. Like VT1 I pretty much knew immediately what I wanted to play and reading down the talent list, I'm not blown away. It's good, options are nice, something to look forward to. But nothing so far makes my gamer brain light up with possibilities. Maybe when I'm not in newb tier gear levels and the stuff is more interesting, it'll seem like it has a bit more depth. That said, between subclasses, talent trees and gear, there is plenty of stuff to try just for its own sake, and plenty more layers of mechanics than VT1.
-I also like that most of the crafting options are unlocked very early, not that you have resources to do anything with it yet but at least you can start seeing options for weapons inside your subclass pretty readily.
So far not displeased with my purchase at all. It does seem like a 100% upgrade to VT1 with no "three steps backward, 1 step forward" moments in design so far.