I wanted to highlight differences between this game and Heroes of Hammerwatch

[Kissatytöt on ihania <3]

I think Heroes of Hammerwatch (HoH) was one of the best designed games I've ever played. I just wanted to highlight some of the things that are different between that game with Hammerwatch II (H2).

Items:
HoH: Items were rare and every item got made your character stronger. There was no inventory management and getting items was fun and rewarding experience. You could continue playing the game without constantly stopping to sort your inventory. This is genious design!
H2: Items are plastered all over the place, often without any apparent purpose. What does scrap of wood do? Inventory management to switch gear depending on build. Is that +0,2 mana regen better than +3 cold resistance? Beats me.

Skills:
HoH: No builds. Every class had set of skills that were carefully designed to form gameplay for that character. Multiple abilities could be fired at same time. Just compare how versatile Thief's grappling hook was compared to hook shot in H2.
H2: Many skills that need to be picked over something else. Way too much stuff to assign to limited number of keys.

Attributes:
HoH: No assignable attributes. You got level, you became stronger. Moreover, improving characters was a guild effort. Want defense for your sorcerer character? Play paladin! Excellent and interesting way to encourage playing different classes. You're not "wasting effort" playing something else.
H2: Assignable attributes. Chance to make a mistake and have suboptimal distribution depending on your build.

Defense:
HoH: Layered defense. Flat reductions, percentage reductions, blocks, dodges, moving out of way. Two damage types (magic and physical). When you got any defense item you could be sure that your survivability increased.
H2: Multiple damage types. Like typical RPG, you won't know for sure what damage types you're going to face and whether you happen to have resistance against those damage types.

Dungeons:
HoH: Randomly generated, divided to levels to make proper pacing to gameplay. You could finish a floor and then take a break to do something else, and return to where you left.
H2: Sprawling dungeons that aren't randomly generated, but still strangely lack any landmarks and other memorable features that would aid in navigating them.

Gold:
HoH: Gold was important judgment point for player. Should I ship this gold to town to keep it safe or continue the run to buy items in shop to increase odds of success in this run?
H2: You die, you lose gold for good. No way to save any of it.


Maybe we can conclude from this and reviews Hammerwatch II has got, that Crackshell team is much better at designing roguelike games than RPG games.

[Revalopod]

I agree with the assessment that differences aside, HoH is a better, more fun game. It's better at being a roguelite than H2 is at being an RPG imo. But H1 is a beloved game and deserved a sequel after 10 years, and the modding capabilities here seem very versatile which bodes well for its longevity.