Alrighty, so. I had what was essentially a 5 day weekend due to well placed holidays and my girlfriend was going away for a couple of those days. Despite myself I ended up just buying the UE so I could play over the weekend, I loved the first one and saw enough streams to know I would like this one so I felt pretty confident despite not usually diving in like that.
I put 43 hours into the game and the TLDR is; It is structurally the same game as the first one but much better in every way. If you loved the first one you will love this one, if you hated the first one you will hate this one.
I've completed one map and have almost completed a second. The game is has the same sorts of bugs, but is much less than the first one, and I wouldn't qualify it as a "mess" just buggy. The AI is much better but people will get "lost" once in a while, this is annoying but is fixed by switching characters, although this sometimes isn't possible due to their quest structure (which is a little odd).
My major complaint is that the game is just too easy, I would like a bit more challenge. You are punished pretty severely if you are unprepared, but it is easy to be prepared. The game could use more enemy types as well. They actually give you a decent number of tools to deal with the zombies, but there are too few zombie and freak types to really let you explore those tools fully.
Also they desperately need to rework how throwing works, I've gotten a little better at it but you really need to be able to aim more precisely when you throw things. This is especially bad inside houses, which are small. They should add an aim mode for throwing when you have the button depressed that shows you the trajectory so you can actually throw things threw windows and what not.
The game is generally much better balanced than the first one and I actually found myself having to make some decisions about what to do. Overall though you so have enough of everything if you aren't totally wasteful and choose your battles wisely.
I haven't even tried multiplayer, so I have no idea how bad that is.
I am biased (love me some survival action management base-building games) but I think it is definitely worth the game pass price, and $30 for the base game is the correct price point. That is a pretty fair price for the amount of polish and content the game has.