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As one of the lucky people who got to play in both of the GenCon playtest Scenarios ("Shards of the Glass Planet" and "It Came from the Vast") I wanted to post a general feel feedback of SF2e's gameplay. This is not intended to be a rules-deep or class-depth post, but more a general "how it felt" post for both scenarios playing at level 1 and 5.
For my experience, I ended up playing an operative for "Shards" and Mystic for "Vast"...and in my opinion two of the most outstanding classes I've played in an RPG for the last 30 years.
Let me start with my overall feeling of playing SF2e in both scenarios. I ended up telling several friends that the classes in SF2e (at least the ones I played and most of what I watched being played around me) felt like some of the funnest classes I've gotten my hands on in a LONG long time. I'm sad I didn't also get to play the classes in reverse (Mystic at 1, Operative at 5) but I guess there's plenty of time for that.
First, action economy for all classes felt spot on. One of the problems I have with PF2e (and I'm going to get a lot of hate over this statement) is that most of the classes ***FEEL TO ME*** like some parts of their kits are intentionally built to waste actions...a very good example to me is Melee Magus which is constantly action starved. Yes, I get spellstrike is giving you weapon + spell damage and 2 actions is appropriate for a spellcast in the system, but Move, Spellstrike and Recharge feels intentionally punishing on a class that pretty much NEEDS all 4 of those actions every round just to keep up...and with only a single attack roll for spellstrike to be either Save or Suck, and a recharge need either way? This is feels like the epitome of intentional hamstringing through a combat system. (I'm not looking for community coaching on how to better play Melee Magus BTW, this is just to offset class design between a notoriously action starved PF2e class and the SF2e classes I witnessed...)
The classes I witnessed in SF2e did not have that problem. Aim or Run and Aim didn't make the operative player choose between bad action economy choices. Moving Reload ensured the same on the other end. Even in a turn where I needed to reload I was still Move and Aim for precision damage, taking a shot with full MAP and full Damage, and then moving again and reloading for better tactical positioning on the battlefield, including getting into range of a fleeing creature to setup a Ranged Reaction AOO when they tried to run again which was both Nuts and one of the funnest things I've done on a "physical damage" character in a LONG time. Playing Crown of the Kobold King last night made me pine for my operative class.
In almost all cases I didn't notice anyone at either table having action economy problems which I thought was outstanding.
Lets talk about Mystic for a second.
I've been DMing and (at least trying) to play that other Sword and Sorcery game for over 35 years now. At no point in my career of playing TTRPGs have I ever ACTIVELY SOUGHT OUT playing a healer. They're boring and are constantly being forced to give up their own gameplay for everyone else's enjoyment at the table. Playing the "support class" that makes everyone else's actions shine and yours be basically pre-defined turn by turn makes for entirely unappetizing gameplay. I've held so many "how to make Clerics better" conversations over the years I've been doing this that most of the time when the subject comes up my friends just roll their eyes and say "oh God, this again?"
And then SF2e creates a healing class that just flat out gives out hitpoints of health in a turn and still mostly allows the Mystic to play like another blaster caster class with backup support abilities - including an awesome little mini-game of when to go hard on regenerating hitpoints into the healing pool. An axe wielding void channeling warlock type spellcaster with a pool of hitpoint they can generate and dish out on a single action with reaction heals is...just satisfying to play and turns an exceptionally boring cleric into a contributive class that I WANT to pick to play at my table.
Major Kudos to whoever came up with the idea for Mystic, because you've saved all of my friends hours long conversations about how to fix Clerics from here out. Now they'll just have to listen to how every cleric isn't a Mystic.
The only class I saw struggling was the "envoy" class. At one point our table GM during "It Came from the Vast" looked at the Envoy player who wanted to use that ability and made a comment like "Roll well, I'd like to see this work at least once this weekend." They were still impactful in the overall scheme, it just felt like a few of their class abilities were lackluster compared to some of the others.
The soldier, also, didn't get to use their AOE all that often / at all. I couldn't really tell if that was a tactics problem or if that was just not enough ability to make it work / encounter design problem...take that for what it's worth.
Also, It Came from the Vast was a bit of a disappointing adventure given that EVERYTHING in it was susceptible to fire and with a solarian in the group a single good crit from that character pretty much ended combat across the board, whether a trash fight all the way up to the end boss.
Overall an exceptionally fun experience all the way from start to finish. A little tweaking could result in some of the funnest and most influential character classes in modern RPGs today.
This is a fantastic debrief, and it's refreshing to see a lot of positivity in the assessment too. Reading through it, a lot of this tracks, and I agree It Came From the Vast! felt almost custom-made for a Solarian in the party, what with the mostly melee, fire-vulnerable enemies attacking within easy Striding distance. It's definitely night and day compared to some of the encounters in Shards of the Glass Planet and A Cosmic Birthday.
Will echo that the Soldier in my experience also didn't get many chances to catch more than one enemy in their AoE, and while my appreciation of the Mystic and Operative was a bit different (I personally think they're both quite overtuned, and don't have to make the tougher choices other classes do by default because they get to have their cake and eat it too), I do agree it felt exhilarating to play them at times. I'd quite like to see some bits of their current playstyles kept for sure, specifically the Operative's amazing action compression and the Mystic's ability to easily heal and cast powerful offensive spells on the same turn.
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So I don't really want to turn this into a back and forth mechanics argument thread so please don't take it as such, I very much appreciate and understand your perspective, but I do want to state this:
To me, as a semi-newer PF2e player (came over from the other game but played PF1e for years) a lot of PF2e feels UNDERTUNED to me. The classes in SF2e felt like a breath of fresh air.
Whereas I create a character in PF2e and immediately I start looking for their LIMITATIONS and thus I start figuring out optimal game play based around the limitations of the class (I go back to my Magus, which is a ranged Magus because melee magus is much less functional for instance...or I create a "stance" monk because weapon monk is much less functional), in SF2e I never sat down with the character sheets and asked "where am I going to have game play/tactical problems with this character" like I do with almost every PF2e character I play. All of the classes were "I can do what?!?!?!?!"
The limitations weren't there. Yes I still have to make unique and meaningful choices round to round on what actions I wish to take, but I don't feel hamstrung by the system with arbitrary bad choices introduced for reasons I can't really understand (What most people seem to refer to as 'balance' in the PF2e system I see as a lot of shoe-horned limitations so that a feat could be introduced to remove or limit the limitation...coming from several other systems PF2e feels like a lot of intentionally created problems just so you can introduce a feat based solution to them which then gets the tag 'meaningful choice' applied to it by the community).
SF2e just didn't seem to have the intentionally and arbitrarily created problems that had to be solved through feat tax. The character classes played and flowed better to me because 'meaningful choice' wasn't 'how can I NOT have to do this thing I don't want to do', it was 'how do I do this thing I really want to do.'
What you call "overtuned" (and I definitely see why you'd say that with a PF2e lens) I actually see as the reason the characters felt so fluid and active, exactly why I felt it was important to post that gameplay felt awesome in SF2e.
Take Operative for a moment. Lets assume that this was a PF2e designed class. Aim would be it's own action, "Run and Aim" would not be there. You would then be asked to make the 'meaningful choice' between a MAP attack and aim each turn. "On this turn I have to move to get in range of my target, do I want to take 2 shots or 1 shot with Precision Damage..." I would say most PF2e players I talk with see this as the greatness of the PF2e system. PF2e might even introduce a feat at level 5 or 10 for the class to turn the 1 action aim into a 0 action aim and then the player could "look forward to" the gameplay time where they can take those two shots on a turn.
But that choice: Do I get to attack twice or once with precision damage, isn't a "heroic" choice. You don't come away from that choice with a sense of just how awesome your character is...you come away from that choice with a sense of just how limiting the PF2e 3 action system can be.
Starfinder 2e (so far as I've seen) brings HEROIC choices back into the fold. My Operative was choosing between making a MAP(1) attack and raising a defensive shield a round, not choosing between precision damage and a second attack. Functionally this meant that my operative looked forward to firing that second shot, hoping it hit and getting the extra 1d4 on top of the attack not grousing that I had made the choice for precision damage and then missed my ONE attack role I got to make that round so that the whole round was a bust of mostly doing nothing. This is a FAR SUPERIOR feel to the PF2e method of limiting randomized actions so that it's much easier to literally no-op your turn with a single bad roll.
To me, this isn't overpowered or overturned, it's a fix for PF2e's SEVERE undertuning...and it's causing me to actively look for groups of TTRPG people I know to run through the playtest modules and one-shots just to show how good feeling the SF2e classes are.
My group just did Shards tonight with a bit of field test 5 as a chaser. Iseph was prominently performing well. My mystic's Vitality Network had a big wow factor. Obozaya has mismatched subclass and equipment. If she were an action hero to go with her machine gun or had a stellar cannon to go with her bombardier fighting style I think she'd have had fewer issues getting into range to actually use her class features. A 20' cone with only one action left over to bring it to bear is really painful. Dae was inconvenienced by enemies being so spread out but was still reasonably functional.