So I've been reading some reports about how the main quest is threadbare, and I've just had a (the?) big talk with the green dude.
It's weird. On one hand, I think some of POE2 is far better written than 1, and I really like how they wrote Eothas' dialogue. He's different from a melodramatic, manipulative type like Irenicus or Kreia, and despite his epoch-ending intentions, has nothing of the cringy Disney "HAHA DEATH COMES TO US ALL" shit like the Arcanum endboss. He's measured and calm, and someone who's been there and seen it all, closer in tone to your confrontation with Kelemvor at the end of MOTB. His journey, and the way it is disclosed to the player, is also done quite smoothly. I like it on the whole far more than the Thaos crap, and it's also a far better take on the whole gods issue so far (though I haven't seen the ending).
On the other hand, both POE1 & 2 suffer from the fact that the most interesting themes in the main story are not properly integrated into the whole game. The Hollowborn crisis and its visceral effects were easily the most powerful things about the POE1 story, but instead of the crisis taking its toll everywhere you go and infecting everything you do, it becomes one of many other threads - animancy, gods, etc. - that should synergise but end up diluting. By the time you get to the second city it's background noise. Similarly, here, even though you see certain hotspots with giant Eothas footprints, you never feel like you're chasing Eothas - there's no carnage, no urgency, no nothing, people just sometimes mention it like a seasonal flu. So there's again a great disconnect from the faction squabbling in the Deadfire and the island-hopping pirating in the summer sun, and the actual chase that you're on, which is why I suspect some people feel like it's too short.
Oh, and the narrator & narration is shit obviously, but it's easy enough to ignore.