It's very interesting you say this, because I am one of those people who played D:OS1 and did NOT care for it at all. I especially did not care for the world/setting, the story, the characters, and the writing. The mechanics were okay, though of course I'm generally not a fan of TB combat. So then on the basis of this experience, I have not had any interest in playing D:OS2. But a lot of people on game forums keep telling me I should, because "D:OS2 is a much better game than D:OS1." But from all of my own research of D:OS2, including several hours of watching Youtube videos and streams, D:OS2 is better than 1 only in mechanics and gameplay, but even worse than 1 in all the other RPG elements as I've listed them above (which are the things most important to me).
Yeah, DOS2 is ironically more of a combat simulator compared to 1. There were far more varied environments and puzzles in DOS1, probably because the devs realized the sheer amount of mobility skills in DOS2 trivializes them to the point where it was pointless to implement more. DOS2 also has points of no return after every act due to how the plot is structured, while DOS1 doesn't.
It's much better in the combat department and the writing isn't as cheesy as in DOS1, but there's some caveats in regards to the combat late game that a lot of people conveniently don't bring up when recommending DOS2 (or never got far enough in the game to see the issues that arise, I've noticed over the years that quite a number of people praising DOS2 end up admitting later that they never actually got past act 2 for whatever reason, usually multiplayer-only players whose groups fell apart halfway through the game). Opinions almost universally sour the moment people step into Acts 3 and 4, and it was to the point where the Definitive Edition was aimed towards rebalancing and redesigning Act 4 especially.
