People should tamper their expectations. This is an early access release, which only means the developer has transitioned to a more open dev phase of production

People should tamper their expectations. This is an early access release, which only means the developer has transitioned to a more open dev phase of production. They will gather feedback from their target audience rather than only QA and focus groups. But the game is still in early-mid production. It is incorrect to treat it as a finished sequel. Expectations are already usually too high for game sequels - the players do not seem to understand how hit-driven the industry still is and that a hit is not guaranteed to be followed up by an even bigger hit. But that's a separate topic. This game hasn't gone through the full production cycle yet - it should be obvious to anyone who cares, the game didn't have the usual 6 month marketing ramp-up prior to release, and it is still not feature-complete. It is only a transition to an open dev stage in production. The game is an open alpha. That already might disappoint people who were expecting a finished product in early access. But it will doubly disappoint people who were expecting a finished hit sequel. While it may be disingenuous to sell it at nearly full price (which makes it equivalent to a pre-order with alpha access, just packaged differently) or advertise the game with trailers of the full product showing features that do not yet exist, that whole trend in the games industry is also a separate topic. Overall, expectations should be re-adjusted to the reality of the situation: sequels are not guaranteed to be better than originals, and an early access release does not, by a mile, mean the game is finished.