Just defeated Irenicus in Spellhold on my first attempt at a full SCS trilogy playthrough, and overall I'm in two minds about the mod.
On the positive side, it delivers memorable encounters e.g. bandit camp, Iron throne, and the final Sarevok showdown, in addition to more generally enabling spellcasters to become truly dangerous opponents (who all quietly agreed to memorise 3x Chaos). And when the Rakashashas in the house near the druid grove responded to my ducking in and out of the door by dropping a teleport field I was really impressed, and amused.
But, those same cats are immune to spell lvls 1 through 7 (!), naturally immune to normal weapons, and cast PfMW on themsleves (!!). This is too much. I installed the Milf's meteors nerf because I agreed with the reasoning, but if there is way to beat that encounter without them early-mid game I couldn't think of it. The precasting is also hard to love, though to a degree it does make sense, and spellcasters are indeed too vulnerable without it (I backstab-gibbed that powerful mage in the docks, who is apparently a pretty stiff challenge when fought 'fairly'). Funnily enough, I did notice that while they do cast a lot of spell protections, they often neglect combat protections, so the best solution isn't 'mage duelling' but simple +1 arrows or weapons applied directly to the wizard (at least in BG1 & early BG2).
Outside of SCS, I really dislike the EEs. All that's been said ad infinitum i'm sure, but it's hard to believe that guys that worked on the original signed off on what often amounts to vandalism. How can you compare the stone ui of the original, where buttons grind and crunch, and everything has a satisfying weight and presence, to the EE's merely functional 'enhancement'. I appreciate that you can turn off most of the egregious elements, but it's dismaying to consider that newcomers will think that awful health bars, character outlines, and literally sucking all the color out of the world when paused is how the game is supposed to look.
Finally, I have to admit that I seem incapable of playing BG2 without one party member slaughtering another. Previously that's been because I mix and match alignments, but this time I opted for a party of goodies/neutrals, including Anomen and Keldorn, who develop an interesting would-be mentor/student relationship. But then I did Anomen's quest.
Now, this games moral outlook isn't often overbearing or intrusive, but here it seems that the devs decided that revenge is necessarily evil, or maybe that's their understanding of Anomen's obligations as an aspiring paladin. Either way, I encouraged Anomen to revenge the murder of his sister. The way I see it - that's his family, abstract notions of walking a nobler path to eschew vengeance don't apply, it's eye for an eye old testament time. So, he chunks the guys daughter (based) but this means that he 'fails' his quest, and the order expel him. I loved his reaction to this, and when Keldorn started condescending to him again Anomen just loses it. Whereas he used to gently rebuke Keldorn's paternalism, now he's all 'Silence, dog!' and 'Die, you bastard!', and fuck it, I let them duel it out and Anomen chunked Keldorn in the Harper base reception area. I've never seen that interaction before, and it's great that even after 20 years this game still has new ways to amuse and entertain you.
