well he's pretty different imo. Not like the difference between ct and cs haku but still pretty different. I mean my baller status 6C fatal counter lol you're almost dead combo only works in the corner now, sans the second 6C and 5C>3C ender. does about 2K less, doesn't bother me too much since damage is damage. other things are gone(renka and hotaru wall bounce now, slightly harder to combo, tsubaki copter gone, no more j.D) in exchange for a few new gatlings which I like(2A > 2B/5A/5B, 5A > 6A/5B) not to mention grabbing a star off of a successful, but less threatening counter(s), and being able to combo off of some of them. A whole list of other things I could go into detail with but overall he's more balanced for cs2 gameplay, i mean sure the basic stuff is all the same(same gameplan, same general character idea, just different links that need provide a sort of "okay you know hakumen, he's still good you just need to get used to some of these changes" same deal as the difference between ct and cs haku) Overall yeah I do moderately play cs1(hell my usual skill level when i play some of you guys is literally me just playing once or twice during the week) but it's honestly gonna be less than usual until I have an idea of when cs2 will come out(not speculated idea but actual, it's gonna come out for xbox at this time, date)
That and the idea of being able to throw 6C in the start up of a bnb is quite amusing to me :3 /pumpedForCS2
tl;dr: yeah he's pretty different from what i've observed/read about.
the arcana hype is still with me, I'm making an avatar atm XD