BlueMooner: I thought about it, but don't want to miss out on the deep plot, I'm sure, of the first game. /s
If and when you play it, I'd be interested in your opinion.
I'm about 5 hours in. I had actually played the first one a few years ago almost all the way through (23 hours) and the first game started feeling overly grindy somewhere around level 25-30, whereas this started feeling pretty grindy around lvl 8, and even before that I killed more lvl 1 rat traps than I probably care to admit.
The character creation is the best part of this one so far lol.
I do think they had some creative ideas here with the trait system (Elf rogue cheerleader!), but the combat is largely unchanged; the combat skills are still mostly creative enough, but the options of where/what you fight feel really constraining.
The humor feels a bit more forced/abstract (lots of jokes about conflicting rulesets - I don't know that I've laughed at any here). While there is a new crafting system, the drops themselves feel pretty underwhelming. The weapons I'm using at level 14-15 are mostly the same weapons I had at level 1-2 other than the two staves I crafted up to add +dmg/mana, and what I can buy from the vendor isn't a significant upgrade. Only 2 of 5 characters have armor because the slight damage mitigation doesn't really seem worth gimping the mana pool all classes have to use (esp. warrior). As is I often run low on mana faster than health. Maybe I'm missing something, but that aspect of it just doesn't seem thought out.
You can buy a shield (zero have dropped) but weapons add threat (and damage) and shields just have damage mitigation which isn't especially useful if your tanky characters don't get attacked at all and your mage gets constantly squished. In theory you can enchant your melee weapons through crafting, but a required component doesn't drop til ...later?
All in all the reviews suggesting that the +1 edition of the first game are better than the sequel do seem to hold true for my experience so far. It's not a bad game, it's just mostly more of the same with a few new ideas but less overall charm.
Though the reviews also suggest this game is much shorter (unless you want to extend it with NG+), so I may only be 4-5 more hours from finishing the main questline at least, assuming I don't need to drop someone from my current party (war/thief/cleric/paladin/mage) to level up a different class from lvl 1 that unlocks later (ninja/druid/barbarian I think).
So I'll probably see it through as long as I don't have to skill another character/two up from scratch to beat the final boss. How's that for a ringing endorsement? ;)