First things first, I POE2 is one of my favourite games. As it is the witcher series, planescape, wasteland series, the divinity series, tyranny, Neverwinter nights series, bg, iwd, fallout, temple of elemental evil, pillars of radiance, modded elder scrolls games, etc... or even south park: SOT
To like them is not mutually exclusive. They have more in common than... let's say battlefield 4 or league of legends. Pointless battles over a niche genre, like western crpgs only makes it more niche, and that causes fewer sales and less money to make more. Myself, I´m perfectly ok with having so many titles, or even more, even if those are not perfect for me.
I find it funny that 90% of the threads about WoTR are full of people just complaining about the things they do not like about the first game instead of talking about the second (the second game those posters did not even played). and the threads become just another thread about Pf:KM instead.
Second, I am not going to argue the reviews here ( some are a matter of personal opinion, some are so plain inaccurate it is not even worth the time to refute because anyone playing the betas more than 10 minutes will find it false)
but I find it puzzling that there are many people judging a game without even playing it.
There are some things that videos, photos or second-handed opinions simply cannot convey. Games are meant to be played, a stream, videos, does not show everything that a game will have. There are even cases that some things that seem awful or boring in theory work well when you are playing. Like the terrible camera of Mirror edge that causes vertigo to everybody besides the one that is playing, because it makes you feel you are really jumping between buildings. Or the 8-bit graphics of undertale or "to the moon" , that become part of the story itself. Even the fact that you can finish a game without killing no one may seem boring to some, but it works in games like Alpha protocol or Undertale. It happened to me that some games does not appeal to me for some puntual things; but after some time I actually try them and became one of my favourites, because some flaws may not be flaws, or simply may not matter if you are playing it.
The first Neverwinter, for example, I dislike the main campaign even remastered, but after trying multiplayer, the two expansions and the many custom campaigns it was a game worth buying and playing ( I have the impression that Solasta is going to be like that, it has a lot of potential and there are many people already making fanmade campaigns)
