The changes from the first alpha weekend to now are night and day. In addition to game feel getting better, the game looks significantly better and seems reasonably well optimized, at least for an alpha.
I'm a big fan of Smite 2 and really am more-or-less transitioning to just playing this instead of Smite, at this point. There are lots of balance problems right now (including how impactful autos are vs mages who don't rely on autos), but the game is just super fun and expressive so far.
Right now the biggest criticisms I can see are about the shop (still kind of unintuitive), lack of tutorials and ways to learn, and matchmaking (which is something that will improve with more players, of course).