I'm going to pull this from the 1st ed Core Rulebook only. Here is what they say about Elves:
Elf Racial Traits
+2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, –2 Constitution: Elves are nimble, both in body and mind, but their form is frail.
Medium: Elves are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Normal Speed: Elves have a base speed of 30 feet.
Low-Light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light. See Chapter 7.
Elven Immunities: Elves are immune to magic sleep effects and get a +2 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells and effects.
Elven Magic: Elves receive a +2 racial bonus on caster level checks made to overcome spell resistance. In addition, elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Spellcraft skill checks made to identify the properties of magic items.
Keen Senses: Elves receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception skill checks.
Weapon Familiarity: Elves are proficient with longbows (including composite longbows), longswords, rapiers, and shortbows (including composite shortbows), and treat any weapon with the word “elven” in its name as a martial weapon.
Languages: Elves begin play speaking Common and Elven. Elves with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Celestial, Draconic, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Orc, and Sylvan.
Now, I'm omitting all the descriptive fluff since that will likely change in the Playtest going live. So, what does the current playtest say about the Elves?...
Elf Ancestry
Hit Points: 6
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Ability Boosts: Dexterity, Intelligence, Free
Ability Flaw: Constitution
Languages: Common, Elven
Bonus Languages: At 1st level, if your Intelligence score is 14 or higher, you can also select one of the following languages: Celestial, Draconic, Gnoll, Gnomish, Goblin, Orcish, or Sylvan.
Traits: Elf, Humanoid
Low-Light Vision: You can see in dim light as though it were bright light.
ANCESTRY FEATS
At 1st level, you gain one ancestry feat, and you gain an additional ancestry feat every 4 levels thereafter (at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th levels). As an elf, you select from among the following ancestry feats.
AGELESS PATIENCE FEAT 1
You move at a pace born from longevity that might infuriate your shorter-lived comrades but enhances your thoroughness. You can spend twice as much downtime as usual on a downtime activity to receive a +2 circumstance bonus to all checks related to that downtime activity. For more about downtime, see page 318.
ANCESTRAL LONGEVITY FEAT 1
You have accumulated a vast array of lived knowledge over your long life. During your daily preparations (see page 317), you can reflect upon your life experiences to become trained in one skill of your choice. This proficiency lasts until you prepare again. More about skills and proficiency can be found on page 142.
DEMON SKIRMISHER FEAT 1
You have served in the fight to reclaim your homeland from demons, and thus you have learned to mitigate those fiends’ strengths and amplify their weaknesses. Your attacks treat demons’ resistances as if they were 1 lower and demons’ weaknesses as if they were 1 higher. If you use the Stride action on your turn, you instead treat demons’ resistances as 2 lower and their weaknesses as 2 higher until the end of your turn.
FORLORN FEAT 1
Watching your friends age and die fills you with moroseness that girds you against harmful emotions. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to saves against emotion effects. If you succeed at a saving throw against an emotion effect, treat it as a critical success instead.
KEEN HEARING FEAT 1 (heritage, can only select at 1st level and cannot change or gain another heritage feat)
Your ears are finely tuned to even the slightest whispers of sound. As long as you can hear normally, you can use the Seek action to sense unseen creatures in a 60-foot cone instead of a 30-foot cone. You also gain a +2 circumstance bonus to sense unseen creatures within 30 feet that you can hear with a Seek action.
NIMBLE FEAT 1
Your reflexes and lithe muscles are tightly honed. Your Speed increases by 5 feet. Additionally, when you use the Stride action, you can ignore difficult terrain in one square during that move.
OTHERWORLDLY MAGIC FEAT 1
Choose one cantrip from the arcane spell list (see page 199). You can cast this cantrip as an innate arcane spell at will. The cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up. You can learn more about spells on page 192.
UNWAVERING MIEN FEAT 1
Your mystic control and meditation allow you to resist external influences upon your consciousness. When you would be confused, frightened, or stupefied for at least 2 rounds, reduce the duration by 1 round. You still require natural sleep, but you are immune to effects
that would cause you to fall asleep. This protects only against the asleep condition, not against other forms of falling unconscious.
WEAPON ELEGANCE (ELF) FEAT 5
Prerequisites Weapon Familiarity (Elf)
You are attuned to the weapons of your elf ancestors and are particularly deadly when using them. Whenever you critically hit using a weapon of the bow or sword group, you apply the weapon’s critical specialization effect.
WEAPON FAMILIARITY (ELF) FEAT 1
You favor bows and elegant weapons. You are trained with longbows, composite longbows, longswords, rapiers, shortbows, and composite shortbows. In addition, you gain access to all uncommon elf weapons. For the purpose of proficiencies, you treat martial elf weapons as simple weapons and exotic elf weapons as martial weapons. More about weapons can be found on page 178.
So what's the same?
Well, both get bonuses to Dex and Int, with a penalty to Con. Medium-sized, 30' speed. Low-light vision.
So what's different?
The 1e Elves have 4 abilities at 1st level: Elven Immunities, Elven Magic, Keen Senses, and Weapon Familiarity.
The 2e Elves get only 1 Ancestry Feat at 1st level, chosen from 9 available feats. "Forlorn" is not quite the same bonuses as the 1e "Elven Immunities," but pretty much is plus some if you combine it with the "Unwavering Mien." Likewise "Otherworldly Magic" is quite different from the 1e "Elven Magic." The 2e "Keen Hearing" is more limited than the 1e "Keen Senses," since the 2e only improves hearing and not all senses. "Weapon Familiarity" is about the same for both. The biggest difference is that in 1e Elves have these 4 abilities at 1st level, while in 2e it takes until 13th level to have the closest comparable abilities, and at 17th level the 2e Elf gets their final Ancestry Feat.
I kind of like a few things in the 2e Ancestries. Speaking of the Elves specifically, the "Ancestral Longevity" is pretty cool as it lets you gain training in a skill of your choice, that you can change every day. Kinda works for the "been there, done that" of a very long-lived race without just giving them training in everything. Also the "Weapon Elegance" is neat as it lets you build on being trained with racial weapons, even if you weren't a fighter-type-class.
But then some of them are weird, like "Ageless Patience" that lets you take twice as long on a downtime action to gain a bonus on the skill check. Is that a)so useful that it deserves one of your few (and therefore precious) feats? and b)is it worth a feat and not something that anybody should be able to do? I would say no to both of those, but apparently the designers disagree with me.
The really weird thing to me is the timing. Let's say you take Keen Hearing at 1st level, which you pretty much have to due to it being a heritage feat. Then at 3rd level you take Otherwordly Magic, which gives you one cantrip that you can cast at will. Well, if you're a Wizard then you've just gotten your 2nd level spells, so how is the racial ability anywhere near the same power of the other class feats and skill feats? And think about the difference at 17th level, when you could gain a racial cantrip at the same time you get your 8th level spells. All the Ancestry feats are so low-powered that they are a very small, likely insignificant, ability at the higher levels (which is when your character moves from being a skilled mortal into being a demigod).
I like the idea of customizing your race, but I don't think making the ancestries weaker at the start to slowly and incrementally increase over time is a good idea. Plus Pathfinder already has a system for building or customizing a race in the Advanced Race Guide that one imagines could be streamlined and re-used instead of being thrown out for a whole new system.
By comparison here is the Elf in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (again removing descriptive stuff):
Elf Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
Size. Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep. Trance. Elves don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day. (The Common word for such meditation is “trance.”) While meditating, you can dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Elvish.
Subrace. Ancient divides among the elven people resulted in three main subraces: high elves, wood elves, and dark elves, who are commonly called drow. Choose one of these subraces. In some worlds, these subraces are divided still further (such as the sun elves and moon elves of the Forgotten Realms), so if you wish, you can choose a narrower subrace.
High Elf
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.
Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.
Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for it.
Extra Language. You can speak, read, and write one extra language of your choice.
Wood Elf
Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.
Fleet of Foot. Your base walking speed increases to 35 feet.
Mask of the Wild. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Dark Elf
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Superior Darkvision. Your darkvision has a radius of 120 feet.
Sunlight Sensitivity. You have disadvantage on attack rolls and on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight when you, the target of your attack, or whatever you are trying to perceive is in direct sunlight.
Drow Magic. You know the dancing lights cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the faerie fire spell once per day. When you reach 5th level, you can also cast the darkness spell once per day. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Drow Weapon Training. You have proficiency with rapiers, shortswords, and hand crossbows.
Overall I have to say that I like the Pathfinder 2e version the least. Starting with fewer abilities and gaining them over a very long time, that are usually much weaker than the other abilities you'll be gaining - at 15th Level you can become Legendary in a skill, at 16th (or earlier) you can take the Legendary Skill Feat, which for Acrobatics means you can jump out of a plane and not take any damage (or orbit, it says that you take no falling damage from any height). Then at 17th level you can gain a cantrip..... woo hoo. Now, maybe and hopefully the finished 2e will have lots of higher-level Ancestry Feats, but even that is kind of a pain since you are constantly choosing feats at nearly every level. Feats, feats, feats, feats, all feats all the time. It really seems like too much customization, for something that I have a hard time understand how it works in the narrative of the game world, and doesn't seem like it's really going to define your character. What is the reason for taking away abilities and scattering them over time? And how are you developing your biological and cultural abilities while pursuing a career (Class)? I don't know. It isn't terrible, but I don't think it's better.
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