So, I'm finally playing this and I'm surprised I'm liking it more than I had anticipated. I'm almost done with Fort Joy, I can immediately get into the boat and leave, but I haven't explored a single room in the actual building of the fort. I'm playing with the initiative mod, severely reduced bloat (5% per level), non-omniscient opponents, and armor-based saving throws. Armor is worse than I thought, though, even with severely reduced bloat and saving throws, the dual armor system is annoying and pointless. It makes some characters basically worthless in specific circumstances, so the old tip of going a single damage type still seems to be reasonable. I hope the environmental interactions are significantly reduced in BG3, every fight in D:OS2 devolves into swimming in shit and using movement abilities to get around the shit. They aren't even all that deadly tbh. The AI is dumb and combat is overall a bit too easy I'd say. I don't know if the mods are responsible for that, but that's my experience.
Anyway, specifics. The economy in Fort Joy is surprisingly well balanced. I don't have money for everything I want and it's not easy to get money. There's no "go invisible and steal every painting in Cyseal for a lot of gold" like in D:OS1. The attributes are laughably oversimplified and don't interact with your skills in as many ways as in D:OS1. There are no action point penalties for low attributes for example, making it very easy to make hybrids. The arbitrary distinction between melee strength- and dexterity-based weapons throws a pointless wrench in the ordeal and I'm not sure why they did it. It certainly isn't in-line with the overall design and this particular system gives me feelings of being undercooked or nobody caring enough about that. There are a lot of such small bewildering decisions, like only being able to backstab with daggers or having an easily accessible ability to teleport behind mobs in the rogue tree making positioning an afterthought, but I'm not going to list them all.
The tags are used extensively and numerously, but they never seem to provide alternative quest solutions, at least the ones I have (dwarf, bandit, scholar), sooooo yeah. Kinda pointless, very cosmetic-only. I'm playing a custom character btw. Speaking of alternative quest solutions, there actually aren't that many while I was led to believe otherwise. I recall only 2 such quests outside of the main one of escaping. The first is freeing the caged elf in the center. You can either kill Griff and his entourage or try to get his drugs from the lizard which requires a persuade check. It feels like there should be a second way to get the drugs tbh. I failed my check and felt forced to kill Griff. This is tied to the overall main quest, though, so it's not too bad. The other one is getting that collar off of you. You can either persuade the blacksmith or win the arena (which isn't obvious btw). Speaking of the arena, I was severely disappointed. I thought there would be a bunch of hand-crafted fights that get progressively tougher, the NPCs there sure seem to indicate that, but nope. One fight and you are done, go get your collar removed. Lame.
Now the writing. Oh, boy, where do I start. I knew it's going to be quite the edge when that lizard cut off its own tongue and then was executed, but that's not what bugs me the most. What is weird is the dynamic in the camp. It feels like everyone just got here, yet there's already a social hierarchy going on, with Griff being at the center of it. How did this happen so fast? How does it affect the others outside of the 2 people for the quest? Where do the drugs go and how are people using them? How does he get the drugs? Every quest feels like a separate thing that exists in a vacuum. If that lady can remove collars, why aren't there groups organized around collar removal and tricking guards into thinking the collars are still active? It's not like this is a secret, she just tells me she can remove them when I asked her about it. What's up with the man who killed the lizard and is making a coffin for his wife or whatever? What's up with the elf creep you can accuse of being a serial killer? Some of the dialogues are plain strange, like with Butter. Why am I given 5 options to flirt with her specifically? Everything feels unreal and disconnected from each other, including your character's motivation. We are told to hate the magisters, but it's not well established enough for us, as players, to care that much. It's just assumed we want to escape and that's the first thing we start doing the moment we arrive at Fort Joy. These things need time to stew. Give me more reasons to hate the magisters, give me more reasons to want to escape, show me a more complex social structure in the concentration camp. The seeds are already there (drug trafficking, collar removal, battle arena, a variety of opinions about sourcerers, several cliques with conflicting motivations), but just like in PoE2 they don't go anywhere.
I guess they thought it would be enough to give you a few ways to escape Fort Joy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd have liked more companion input and characterization, they feel bare-bones. Eh, I still like it, but we'll see how far that will go.
