Pathfinder 2e is basically just D&D done better than D&D itself has ever done. It’s like if 3.5e had been refined into a more streamlined and modern game with a bunch of the bad-design-decisions that are baked into the fabric of D&D mitigated as much as they possibly can without just ripping them out, and they found a way to keep the variety and customizability of 3.5e but without as many exponentially compounding consequences.
Basically, where D&D went down this path of flattening out the splat and turning characters into basically straight line level up progressions with as few choices as possible and no room for character building (that is, you choose your class, your major class feature, and then that’s it you’re done you just level up and never think about anything again unless you’re a magic user who gets to choose which spell you want to be allowed to cast once per day), Pathfinder 2e went down the path of pruning the sprawl of options down to a few major branches for each class, and then fleshed that out with a lot of little choices that aren’t particularly meaningful but which leave tons of room for flavorful character building and which make sure that every level everyone is making some sort of choice no matter how small and fluffy that choice is.
Pathfinder 2e is basically just D&D done better than D&D itself has ever done. It’s like if 3.5e had been refined into a more streamlined and modern game with a bunch of the bad-design-decisions that are baked into the fabric of D&D mitigated as much as they possibly can without just ripping them out, and they found a way to keep the variety and customizability of 3.5e but without as many exponentially compounding consequences.
Basically, where D&D went down this path of flattening out the splat and turning characters into basically straight line level up progressions with as few choices as possible and no room for character building (that is, you choose your class, your major class feature, and then that’s it you’re done you just level up and never think about anything again unless you’re a magic user who gets to choose which spell you want to be allowed to cast once per day), Pathfinder 2e went down the path of pruning the sprawl of options down to a few major branches for each class, and then fleshed that out with a lot of little choices that aren’t particularly meaningful but which leave tons of room for flavorful character building and which make sure that every level everyone is making some sort of choice no matter how small and fluffy that choice is.