Ok it's taking me forever to compile my thoughts, but Seabass really calls out a lot of my high points so I'm going to expand on some of that stuff from a player perspective.
First, character build: I've played two variatons on a "tank" style spellsword, the first was a master blacksmith, the second leaned more into spells and per day fighter skills. Both builds did not bother with any profs, personal choice that is definitely doable in 2.0. Intercept is great with bigger armor totals, combined with mettle and resolute if you want to play the tactical tank boy oh boy should you be excited for 2.0.
Undead: boy oh boy this is definitely the biggest difference of the game and it is going to be one of the biggest shifts in player combat styles. Shatters are strong, pure damage seems weak, and high level undead having dispels makes spellswords MUCH more important than I thought on paper. "Heroic battles" is really the best way to describe it. You either do everything or nothing, and that's not a bad thing but should be noted that I burned through my stock of production real quick with spellstored celestial and potion cache spear, and would not be feasible on that scale continuously. The plot guys made it clear though that it was supposed to push us to the edge of our skills.
Meditate: that is absolutely what happened, we had a slog of a town fight, but with a solid amount of skills and spells coming back that we thought we could do 1 more mod, albeit not enough left to do THAT mod and we all chugged through production.
Slays and instant skills: I landed fighter skills. That's really enough said about it. Plus there's enough extra defenses against it that it didn't seem overpowered.
Strikes: sure I got beaten to death by a big angry punch monster, but it felt more like I could do something than the old massive rules, and strikes on our side helped deal with shields.
Monster abilities: I loved the variety of types, and they all felt like the thing they we're more so than "rogue monster, fighter monster, caster monster" sure some of them still feel that way but having that style of monster abilities really solidified what they do. Side note, as a player engulfing a bear, this was the best and funniest thing I've had happen in a long time and was absolutely worth it. The bad thing, please please please change the name of fae curse. I get why it's called that but not being able to use my resist curse on the curse "because" feels bad. Mechanically I get why, but in practice it feels off on both sides, npc and pc.
Swarm: seeing stuff swarm is odd. I'm not sure how I feel about it now because it encourages a "solo" fighting style a bit too much for my taste. The game is about working together and punishing players for working together that often feels bad. Having been on the plot side though, having something to back off the players is absolutely needed, so maybe just have it be less frequent? I don't have a good answer on this yet, I'll add more thoughts after we run our one day from being on the other side of the swarm.
Production: it's a huge step in the right direction. Seeing players happy with trap making is great, seeing more productionists in general is great, currently there is still not enough to do as a blacksmith and you definitely feel it. Strengthening shields is supposed to be your new high end production for stalwart shield, but it's so prohibitively expensive that by the time I asked our blacksmith he just said no. When I was a master blacksmith I had too much production for anything besides arrows. Great steps forward overall, can still make an impact here though.
High magic: right now I just don't think there's enough reason to invest in celestial high magic, they really could use an offensive option, without burst it is noticably bland aside from storm augment and that's not worth more than a purchase or 2. I don't want a high level production caster to feel like they shot themselves in the foot to cast rituals, or they just won't take it.
Monster slayer is still the worst thing mechanically. I know we had players with them, and they just decided not to use them and it felt great. You can't balance undead fights if every adventurer has an undead slayer and boy would they.
After seeing a players "siege device" I really want weapon traps to be moveable after being set. Even if this means it "breaks" after using, watching a trap maker arm a "production slay" would be cool. That said I'm not sure the balance on this so hey, any other ideas?
Wither: I really enjoyed it, but it has a learning curve on both sides of play. Players not knowing they should be dead, and NPCs getting confused after pumping everything into my shield when I offensive wither and just block. Pretty sure this will go away as people learn the rules better.
Spells: specifically the shield spell was great to use against swarms of low damage bad carrier monsters, I want to use it at more than second level because pumping 3 into someone works but could be better. Throwing evocation feels great when you only poke for 2s, but watching an adept hit them for double body damage really makes you feel neglected landing a pitiful 10 flame. There isn't a good reason to memorize the evocation unless you have something that spends it right now.
Final thoughts: the long story short, I would be happy to jump into 2.0 right now. Sure, it has oddities, but less than 1.3 does, and it feels more user friendly all around. I'm sure I'm forgetting things about the weekend but work has kinda taken all my thoughts this week, if you have specific questions I'll try to answer them.