GI've put in around 100 hours, done A10 on all the characters and I can't think of anything in basic gameplay (cards, events, etc.). I didn't read any of the lore stuff you unlock, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's mention of a gay character or something - seems like games can rarley escape the tokenism at bare minimum.
In the same boat regarding playtime/things complete, and the only vibe shifts I can think of are that there's more character interaction/personality and Silent is presented a little differently (the character select screen makes it obvious she's a woman via the lips, but her cards illustrate her as bulkier and less slender/graceful).
There's still the inevitable lore curveball that will come with the finale, more characters and alternate acts so maybe things will shift. But I'm not really sure I care; StS is totally about understanding how all the pieces work together and building your deck to handle specific challenges. They can re-add Watcher with stance swapping relabelled as gender transitions and it wouldn't undermine the gameplay. AFAIK we don't know what Sarkeesian's involvement was - maybe she consulted on something I really like, or something inoffensive like the accessibility mode. It's telling that no one had wokeness complaints about StS2 until someone bothered reading the credits two months after it hit Early Access and farm clicks from her name.
I don't love the extra lore dumps - StS's implied lore like the bird cultists/ritual dagger/awakened one commonalities and the "never liked you" Time Eater line were delightful and unobtrusive hints at a deeper history, and the epochs and dialogue don't have the same charm. But they don't have any elements of culture war. It's curious that they haven't really taken the opportunity to expand on those breadcrumbs from the original game, at least not yet.
Aeonglass is kind of underwhelming so far, but it confirms they're determined to find new ways to punish purely cardspam strategies. I wouldn't be surprised to see its Status cards have varied effects in a later patch - the current Status is basically a Decay you can play, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them add the debuffs, maybe a Void effect, a Parasite that does damage if you remove it, etc. I'm a little worried about how much trouble they seem to be having nailing down a third Act 3 boss when they have six more bosses to make for Alt Act 2 and 3.
I've really liked what the team has been able to do with its balance tweaks so far. They've made a game that's ~3x bigger than the first one and achieving the perfect balance of unfairness/winnability they landed on with the first game is probably not going to be possible. I'm hoping that their roadmap does include some attention to really tweaking the higher difficulties to make A10 feel closer to the original's A20, though.
