I've only played a few rounds of Town of Salem 2 versus my hundreds of games of Town of Salem 1, so I'm not the most knowledgeable fellow when it comes to the sequel, and I daresay that I've a bias towards the original. Some things I say may turn out to be wrong or unnuanced, but they are all inspired by my first couple of times playing Town of Salem 2, meaning that my opinions and takeaways are built on what I experienced in and expected of Town of Salem 2 based on my long time playing Town of Salem 1. My initial takeaway from a few rounds of Town of Salem 2 is that I just like the original more. I reckon it's completely down to my own personal preferences. You may agree, you may disagree, and that's fine. I'm just gonna share my thoughts and hope somebody may find them helpful.

Town of Salem 2's chat looks messier and harder to follow, (though the new "glossary" of terms that have hover text you can use in chat is a really cool feature). The symbols in front of names and numbers (that are not always there and on every player) make it more difficult for me to read along through the chat, as I like to look at the far left of each line of text for the numbers of the players talking.

Dead players have no real reason to stay in a game. In Town of Salem 1, you could stay in a game if you felt like your team was going to win (or if you already had completed your win conditions before dying) and you wanted to get the points from that round. In Town of Salem 2, you don't have to; when a game that you were in finishes, the end results are recorded in your account whether or not you stayed until the end of the game. This is a good feature, I'm giving points to ToS2 for that one.
BUT the original Town of Salem also had a gameplay reason for dead players to stay in a lobby: the Medium. The medium is useful but often underutilized role, either due to dying instantly (or at least before anyone with useful info dies) or because all of the dead players keep leaving. But, the Medium incentivizes dead players to stay in the lobby so that the medium can relay messages from the dead back to the living. There is no Medium role in Town of Salem 2. I don't think the Medium was particularly overpowered, so I expect it got the axe because Blankmedia knows a lot of people have issues with the role (probably due to it not getting used to its full potential most of the time because dead players frequently leave or go afk), and I get the reasoning in leaving the Medium role behind. But I think that it would have been nicer if they had tried to make sticking around after you die more incentivized. Making more roles that work with dead players (maybe a role that lets the ghosts vote on a living player that they get to kill, idk), or just some thing that dead players can do regardless of roles that have an actual tangible impact on the game (i'll be honest, I don't really have any ideas on what they could do for that that wouldn't be super abusable, but I'm really just spitballing here). Instead, Town of Salem 2 has Death Games, two different mini games that suck: there's Death Roll where players roll a 1001 sided die whose sides shrink down to the lowest number rolled until one player rolls a 0 and loses! Then there's Death Guess, where dead players can make bets about which living player they think will die earlier than other living players! Players bet with Ghost Points, a currency system that can only be increased by dying or playing Death Games, however Ghost Points have no actual usage beyond betting in the Death Games. The Death Games are really lame, man.

I have more issues with this game beyond the lack of the Medium, I swear.

Town of Salem 2 really likes being flashier than Town of Salem 1. The pre-game waiting room is no longer just a list of players, roles, and a chat box, it's now the town itself. The game is no longer just talking with other players in the town circle, now you can walk around and enter other players' Club Penguin igloos. The wheel of roles is gone, now your character walks behind a changing screen and walks out as their "true form," a player model representing their role for the game (only for this cutscene, during the actual game you use the player model you chose during customization [unless someone else using it joined your lobby first]). During the night time, you can walk around your house! Dying at night is no longer just a red flash, now it's a little cutscene that extends into the start of the daytime. Trials are now cuts to a new animation on the gallows. And now there are roles who can attack during the daytime, using (you guessed it) another new animation!

I am not a fan of the new animation, I think the lack of a smooth transition from normal gameplay into the cutscene is a bit too jarring for my liking (especially with the daytime cutscenes as they can go off whenever the other player decides to use their ability, as opposed to the nighttime cutscenes which always happens at the end of the night phase). Even more annoying is the fact that you can disable the animations that play during the night (the new death animations) but you can't disable the animations that play during the day (like the deputy shooting someone). You have the option to watch the nighttime animations, but you are required to watch the daytime animations. Why are the daytime animations necessary but the nighttime animations aren't?

I've written way too much already for a game that I'm not too fussed about one way or the other. I just wish I liked Town of Salem 2 more so that I'd be more eager to play the game, since Town of Salem 2 gets more players than Town of Salem 1.

Town of Salem 2 is a remarkable improvement over its predecessor in terms of presentation and mechanical depth. Everything I like about the first game is here, and better.

But anyone who is giving this four stars is not contemplating what the New User Experience is like. There are no tutorials, and the last time I played, all I was really given was a series of YouTube videos that a) were questionably outsourced to a streamer, and b) did not adequately explain any of the question marks I had. There's an exhaustive list of all of the roles you can play and what their mechanics are, and I'm really stressing the exhaust part of that word there. If you want to sit and read it all, you can, but it's hardly an intuitive solution. If you ask for help in any of the lobbies you play, people just ignore you. It's like the first time you play a new board game with your family if the rulebook was written in the style of a foreword by an adolescent individual who expects you to already be familiar with the game, and everyone at the table knows what the game is but you and they deliberately ignore any questions you have about the game itself. Fuck it, it's just Mao at that point. I think that's how it's spelled? You know, Mao. That card game where the one rule is that you're not allowed to tell other people the rules, the one that assholes practically hold dominion over. I'm sure you can learn to play Mao, and for some, that's rewarding. But, from my perspective, I prefer games that are welcoming. I want to both be challenged, and have fun. Fucking crazy, right? Nobody has ever thought of that before!

Overall a much more balanced version of ToS 1, easy access to information and lots of other quality of life improvements like tagging. Customization is cool but still feels a little plain, although I'm sure that will improve with time. It's sad that survivor and medium are gone but honestly in terms of balance and interactivity I guess it's for the best. Some of the new roles are insanely fun like the daytime killing roles (Deputy, Conjurer, Prosecutor) and improved investigative roles (Spy rework, Seer, Psychic). I never played the Coven expansion of ToS 1 so it all feels new to me - and the apocalypse roles are super cool too. Overall chat is a little less quirky and weird than the first game but I guess that's a symptom of the game being in early access and not having any free ways to play it. Overall still a riveting anthropological experience with some added polish and depth.

Those death games suck though LOL like I love the idea of having an extra fun activity after you die but why is one of the games just rolling dice???

Much like the OG Town of Salem was for many years, this is now the go-to chilling in VC game and on that merit alone I gotta love it, but it also improves on the original massively by lowering the burden of knowledge significantly (whereas you pretty much had to have the wiki open at all times if you were playing certain roles in the original). There's still a lot of shit and very boring roles and getting neutral evil is the designated handicap mode, but honestly most of my chagrin comes from how other players react to anything you might do. Dep shoots some rando who turns out to be evil? Everyone goes ohh nice shot nice shot even tho it was a wild guess. Vote guilty on some dude everyone innoed despite being sketchy? Chat is now all question marks and your ass is getting hung regardless. Don't have a defense so you don't post anything? Uh uh-huh nice defense XD. It tilts me to no end. But there's just enough magical stupid ass moments to keep me coming back,so I love it.