So, I hit a bit of a wall with BG2, largely working out who to have in my party, and that made me take a decent size break before coming back: I'm now a chunk of the way through the game and have eventually settled on Minsc, Aerie, Jaheira, Imoen (was Yoshimo until the bit after which you can't keep him in your party) and Mazzy. I'd considered taking Viconia instead of Mazzy because I find her a really interesting character, but it grates on me that you apparently can't do much of a redemption arc with her unless via romance, and she's not into very short men with very large beards (a category Carduelis firmly falls into).
I'm enjoying the unfolding plot, overall. I'm into Chapter Five and am in the Underdark at the moment. The various sidequests which I did lots of in Ch. 2 were mostly fun, the druid one I particularly liked, the cleric one as well. The Windspear Hills seemed a bit bugged because I didn't meet Firkaag before going there but it assumed I had, then I met him in the Copper Coronet afterwards and it was all a bit confusing. I just wanted to go there to drop off the acorns I'd been given in Ch. 1, not get into all those shenanigans.
As to the main quest, I think the thief guilds' split is kind of interesting but almost underplayed because Ch. 2 can easily end up being so much bigger than Ch. 3. I don't find Bodhi a super compelling villain (I went thieves as my option, probably unsurprisingly). On the other hand, I actually really do like Irenicus as a villain. He seems to have about the right amount of screen time, he's very well voice acted, and he looms over the plot quite effectively in a way that Sarevok in BG1 just flat doesn't. It was a bit annoying in Spellhold that I could 100% tell who Irenicus was well before it was actually revealed but was given no option to do anything about it. I also quite like that Irenicus is very powerful but not necessarily quite the top of the tree, so you do still get cutscenes where he's having to negotiate and talk rather than simply being so uberpowered that all he's doing is giving orders.
There are things I'm less enjoying. Inventory management is getting frustrating, and I swear this time it's not just because I keep picking everything up, it's more when party members keep dying that I end up needing to res them and then reassign about twelve items of gear and weaponry to different slots manually. Also the amount one needs to rest feels bizarre, often it's a case of doing about two rooms of a dungeon then resting because otherwise you'll just not have the spells needed. I'm also finding a bit of a lack of +3 weapons around the place, which seem increasingly to be needed for the higher level enemies.
My other slight annoyance in the game is that Dwarf male cleric seems to get a rough deal on content. You have two romance options, both added in the EE, and they are Dorn, a Blackguard, and Neera, a half-elf wild mage. I don't dislike Neera, but she doesn't really fit with Carduelis, and Dorn I killed already because, y'know, ridiculously evil. Annoyingly one can't romance Mazzy, who is both definitely single (albeit grieving) and in terms of alignment and height would be quite a nice match. As aforementioned I might've tried a Viconia romance, but again not on the options list.
Any of my issues with romance content though pale next to my annoyance at the Strongholds. The fighters get a full-on castle, the bards get their own playhouse, the wizards get an awesome interplanar spaceship thingy... and the clerics get to sleep on the floor in someone else's temple who happens to be of the same good/neut/evil alignment as them. This feels underwhelming, especially if you're not a cleric of the relevant deity (and indeed Carduelis is not a cleric of Lathander). And it's not like there aren't a load of ruined temples around the place, either! There are some very cool subterranean ones I'd happily have spruced up and used myself. I do quite like the "caring for the flock" quests you need to do, and the Unseeing Eye quest leading up to it was great, I really enjoyed that. But all that could have been done whilst also giving the player their own chapel, it's not as if the BG2 map system would be super hard to fit another place into.