As an avid PoE1 player who has 8h (act3) so far in the second game: gameplay feels more skill based (enemy/boss attack patterns, synergistic skills, more active defences/survivability) while in original you can faceroll most of the acts and endgame with enough knowledge (vendor recipes, "face tankable" content, automateable defences/damage, simple investable survivability). This might be why people are comparing it to soulslike.
Also the pacing is a lot slower which might add to the feeling of og Diablo/Diablo 2. Of course the progression will be faster after meta is found, but people still theorize that getting to endgame takes more time in PoE2.
Played a bit before going to sleep. Wonderful rythm game so far; a bit different from others so it has some novelty. It has fun mix of following the beat/rythm, while reacting to the enemies' mechanics.
Wish that there was a difficulty between hard and impossible.