So, I've been playing it for a while now, and these are my impressions:
1) the core of the game is the same, and as such it's still very nice
2) there are some big flaws in this new installment, the first of which is the "dungeon floor" design, which means that you encounter the same kind of enemies on a floor (ex. goblins, orc, undead), making the game less varied
3) spell resistance is as annoying as it was in the first game, but now is more frequent
4) defense is so-so because it just prolongs the fights without adding to them much
5) loot is 99% useless: once you find a decent item for each slot (and armor is pretty indistinguishable at every level) and you upgrade it, you're set for life (a similar problem existed in Torchlight)
6) money starts piling up almost immediately, since buying stuff at shops is useless as per point 5
7) following 5 and 6, the loot minigame is useless in addition to being extremely annoying (and you can leave before you complete it to try again, which is kind of stupid)
8) the game is very easy but fights are still too long: playing as an Assassin I can easily dish out 40-50 dmg per spell AND chain them (doesn't scale with level/skills though), making other means of attack useless (skulls and poisons in the first place, but weapons mostly too), but since enemies have a lot of HP/defense it generally still takes a while to finish them, while they cannot touch me thanks to Stealth
9) all minigames are too easy, some points in intelligence and you'll have more turns that you could ever need; some also (prominently lockpicking) often run down to trial an error to get the right gems in the right spot
10) the minigame distribution is weird: up to the 4th floor, I've encontered the lockping and search ones a lot, disarm trap frequently and bashing and unlock spell just about twice each
11) all in all, the only minigame that's interesting it's the spell learning one, which in turn this time around only teaches spells you won't use, at least as an Assassins since your class spells all sinergize a LOT
Still liking it though.