Been playing Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem now that it's released.
Does it pick up later on? I watched somebody play from the start to the first sub-boss (looked kind of like a bulky burning thing that was summoning wyverns) and it looked oh-so-slow. Basically, the only thing that ever really happened was attacking with the default, which looked like a bouncing AoE that killed everything in a few hits, and leisurely dodgerolling out of red circles/rectangles.
That sounds like the default mage staff attack, which builds up 'willpower' to spend on fancier powers. You get 1 (maybe it's 2, I forget) of those fancier powers after the 'tutorial' bit (e.g. a rapid fireball for mages), but it doesn't take long before you can find/buy more. As you gain xp your equipped powers level up, I think they get some straight stat buffs with each level but you can also pick specific upgrades at certain levels, e.g. extra shots on the fireball, or turn a pbaoe heal patch into a targeted heal patch. I spent my first 10 or so levels running an ice nova, a channeled beam/laser, and the heal patch, but I've since gone full summoner with 4 summon powers and the heal patch upgraded to also do damage to enemies that enter it. So in terms of having more interesting stuff to use, I'd say it progresses decently.
For difficulty though, it's been pretty easy so far. I dropped a couple of times on sub-bosses, though you get 3 self-revives if you're playing solo so I've not fully died at all yet (in multiplayer your buddies have to help you back up instead, I think). I'm still only on Act 1 though and I've been pumping the Toughness stat a lot. No idea what the endgame looks like.
...And I could've sworn the reviews for it were like 7.5 a few hours ago, dropping down to 6 now.
Yeah, people are really unhappy with the amount of downtime on the online servers and are expressing as much. It's been down for almost 24 hours now, and is set to be down at least another 12. Even when servers were up it was kinda unreliable, with people having to make multiple attempts to connect, then getting disconnected during their game and losing progress. Offline play is still available, but since you can't play online characters offline and vice versa...