Man I'm having a hard time loving this game

As somebody with 1200 hours in the first, why is this game so insistent on restricting the player in every way imaginable? Why not dive further into what made POE so amazing for over a decade? Let me say that I'm not opposed to games with frictional mechanics and a harder difficulty where positioning is important to think about and I'm fine with you guys not wanting single gem builds, even though I disagree heavily, it's just that there are direct barriers that restrict the overall wonder of character building because GGG took an axe to the infinite options to give you a hand selected few.

Set unchangeable lowest attack/casting times makes those skills almost completely unviable late game with how fast enemies are or for builds that utilize damage over time. Using an honour health bar for the first trials makes every build where losing health is apart of the build unplayable. Why even add a thorns mechanic or block only when shield is raised when that risks damage against you. Dodging is the only viable way. There are keystones where dodging is not possible anymore and they make the honour system unusable, like why have this system? Delaying the minion revive speed when a another minion dies with no way to disable with nodes and only making allowing monk/witch to get a decent amount of spirit restricts every other class from doing a minion, meta, or aura build.

The whole point to POE to me is the freedom and replayability. That although yes some classes are generally better at specific things, you can do everything as everyone. You can go all in one a single thing, and yes it have pros and cons but it's your choice. All the games mechanics are usable by every class. You can take any skill and make it do whatever you want. Want this melee fire skill only deal chaos and make it attack super fast and poison every time, no problem. Want to use a different character and weapon type and instead make that same skill instead do every element and cause explosions, no problem. There were infinite options to every skill and finding a cool unique with a strange effect would unlock thousands of weird possibilities for builds. You could take a slow skill and make it attack a million times in a second even if they basically do no damage, sure some abilities require certain types of melee weapon, but generally you could use any melee type or at least a few different options and build a really strange build around a single melee unique in a million different ways.

It feels like this game stands firm and says "we are making classes now", certain things will only be possible with certain ascendancies and each weapon can use specific skills with no interchanging them. If you're playing as ranger, even if you've only ever used maces you will still be sent to the bow menu every time you use an uncut skill gem because you're playing wrong. No you can't use these skills fast because we set their minimum skill speed, and you can only gain charges the way we want you to gain charges.

The best addition this game has is the weapon swap and weapon points system which is fucking genius, but is completely hamstrung by the amount of weapon points you get in the game. Like fuck you were so damn close to leaning into something you did right, and right at the end you gated that amazing shit behind witchhunter ascendancy only. It's so aggravating to see the potential just fumbled

The whole game feels like a spit in the face for those who've supported POE since the beginning, who've adamantly supported the fact it's so free and different from Diablo and other arpgs, and for the sequel it feels like instead of diving deeper into what we love, we got a compromise to appeal to Diablo players, even thought the first POE was better than everything blizzard has made for the last 15 years combined. I just hope that changes to the fundamental structure of the game come through as they games exits early access because It's hard to recommend right now