Duly completed the game. Mostly got the endings I wanted with the one glaring exception of getting quite a bad result for Sagani, who given she was about my favourite NPC was a bit of a bugger to say the least. But having looked it up, it was kind of hard to reconcile the ways to get better outcomes with the sort of character I was trying to play :/
Yeah I didn't want to say earlier as you hadn't completed it then but unforunately the Sagani quest is a bit of a let down. And I realise that's the point of it but I walked away from it going 'well that was rubbish' rather than 'huh, yeah I guess that's life'. Also the Hiravis quest is weird and grieving mother is all round bad imo.
As you say, hiring randomers has no impact on the game whatsoever, aside from the Rp you give them internally (mine were the crew of my pirate ship
)
Pillars 2 is leagues ahead of 1 in terms of companion interaction. Unfortunately, it has it's own problems but they mostly revolve around none of the factions being likeable and the main quest being the least interesting part of the game and the pirating minigames being the most fun. It does have full turn based mode, and the spells are *so* much better, like night and day.
The Arda dragon, you can bypass it entirely by letting it possess a dragon hunter or I found it's not so bad with a large amount of crowd control spells like paralyse. I think I brought eder, aloth, durance, grieving mother and probably sagani. Eder, aloth and durance are must haves imo, regardless of player character class.
The xpac makes the fight a ton easier though as you can level higher and get more soulbound weapons which are the most powerful in the game. Some nutcases have done the whole game on max difficulty, solo, ironman. Like... Why? Why do that to yourself?
Did you meet the archwizards at all? I can't remember if that was basegame or xpac. Llengrath and Concelhaut (sp?)