Ultimates aren't listed in the default starting factions, but there's no reason you can't still have an Ultimate. If you're not the GM, and your GM doesn't want them to add them as a player faction, you can just be factionless, take Know: Ultimates at 30 and have +Ultimates Interests as one of your motivations. That's pretty much all a faction is.

The Remades are still included, and the description mentions that they're popular with the Ultimates faction.

I think it's likely that if there's ongoing metaplot, there will be some questionable actions done by people associated with the Ultimates faction. This was certainly the case in EP1 as well. Lots of players have enjoyed playing factions like Scum where this has also been true, so I don't think that's a real problem. In any case, it's not clear to me that the devs are even going to add metaplot to EP2.

I'm not sure I know what you dislike about the way Asyncs work now. I think they work really well for a face character, and are a cool addition to combat characters and techies, without being a must-take option. Similarly, I'm not sure what's wrong with Moxie (perhaps the pool issue?).

I personally liked the skill consolidation. It was never clear to me why an expert marksman with a firearm wouldn't be able to hit the broadside of a barn with a laser rifle. I understand that's not for everyone, though.

I'm not sure what you're saying with the mouth piece bit. EP has always had some of the Kurzweil idealism about the future. The main twist is the way they combine that with horror themes.

Things that I like in EP2:

• As mentioned, skill consolidation - before, it was too easy to have these trap characters where you think you'd be competent, but you're missing some skill that applies in certain situations, so you can't do what you built the character to do.


• Morph points - I'm not exactly a fan of pools like this, but they work really well to resolve which part is the morph and which part is the ego. As a side effect of this, the player is much more the ego, and the morph is more like equipment. This was part of the original vision, but is better realized now


• Removal of morph aptitudes - This makes resleeving much less of an accounting nightmare, where all your skills need to be updated. It also gets rid of a stupid issue in EP1 where you would want to tank your ego aptitudes so you could buy the skill to 80, then sleeve in something with a high morph aptitude to get it higher. It didn't make any sense that the best hacker was an idiot without his morph.


• Reduction of gear porn - In EP1 there's so many items. If you know the system, this can be pretty fun, picking out all the good items across all the books and combining them for +100 to whatever roll. That wasn't good for game balance, and wasn't good for new players, who didn't have in-depth knowledge of the system. This reduction of modifiers applies outside of gear too, which makes the game less about fishing for modifiers and more about the story.


• Fewer actions - In EP1, multiple actions was a must-take option. Now, while you can still use pools to take extra actions, you don't get them all at once, and you don't get to keep doing that all day.


• Better opposed tests and superior results - These dice mechanics are a nice addition.


• Cleaner remote operations and hacking rules - The new remote operations and hacking rules are much better. Previously, the jamming/remote control rules were almost as bad as Shadowrun. Now, they actually make sense and are consistent, while preserving the choice between autonomous mode and jamming. Mesh mechanics are simpler as well, which means you don't need a flowchart to figure out how things work.


• Eliminating the networking skills - Replacing these with the simpler reputation system means you don't need to sink tons of points in skills just to use the other set of points you spent in reputation.


• Gear points - I found tracking the individual credits to be a hassle in EP1. I play enough spreadsheet games.

Edit: From reading your other post about "the four different types of Moxie", I'm assume you mean that what was previously one pool is now four pools. As I mentioned, I'm not a huge fan of these pools. Nevertheless, I think it ends up working out pretty well. It's the lesser of two evils, where the other option is to put aptitudes on morphs, which just doesn't work well.