There are mods for the first to make it more blaster-friendly! The impression I get is that blasters are much more effective in t he second game and are, it’s claimed (steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=16…), viable even for Hard playthroughs.
I’m playing on Normal; it’s mostly reasonably easy. Paying a bit more attention to keeping my defences in order would probably serve me well but I’ve not hit any walls or anything like that.