It's more fun if there's something else to miss, not only by itself, that's just inane. I really thought that they've learned a thing or two and made it like Raedric's, with multiple paths and stuff, the dialogue kinda hints at such. You are right that it's worse now that I know it's always the same and there is no incline. White March 1 has been pretty underwhelming now that I know 99% of what it has to offer. The maps are pretty barren, with nothing to see, the most interesting thing was the hot springs. Maybe the monument with the Grey Sleeper was incline in the sense that it's there and it does something. The maps need to be art. I dunno, I was maybe expecting too much. If White March 2 ends up very good I still wouldn't recommend PoE tbh, it's not worth slogging through everything else to get to it. And it's a looooooong game.
If there's one game which will benefit enormously from an Enhanced Edition, it's PoE. There are some nuggets of potential here and there and a good game hides under the hood, but it's all drowned out in mediocrity and dullness. I also don't see any replay value whatsoever, it's soul-crushingly linear and the few branches of reactivity are too few and far between. The factions are a great example, there's only 1 quest you can't do for the factions before choosing one of them. The Dozens' quest in Lle a Rhemen can be done at the start of Act III as opposed to in Act 2, too, it's just not a quest in your log.
I'm actually glad PoE2 is like a reboot and remake, a chance to fix what was wrong in PoE (which is basically everything). I really wanted to like PoE more than I do, now that they had a bajillion patches to fix everything, but even playing it like IWD, i.e. only for the combat, proved not very good. It becomes tedious at around level 10 or even earlier. The dungeons were awful, just awful. Even getting to this point tried my patience, I already listed all the things I had to skip/do to make it more bearable somewhere around here. I'm going to finish it just to see White March 2 and have a save file ready to import into PoE2, but that's about it, I doubt I'll replay it any time soon, if ever. This is not a good thing btw, I really wanted to like it and set my expectations accordingly, but the game prevents me at every turn. To use an analogy which Durance would like - It's like a whore who demands money with each touch or thrust, you want to like it but she prevents that. She might be a good whore underneath all the bullshit, but alas.
