Characters like Dallis, Alexander and the mysterious ‘Cloaked Figure’ disappear for massive stretches, only to show up so abruptly that they might be characters from another game. Somehow, Braccus Rex is unmasked as the main antagonist during the daftly unbalanced final battle. Didn’t he die in the first game? Never mind: I don’t want to know the hokum that’s shoehorned in to make this plot twist viable. He’s fighting alongside another character who’s also had no development (read: appears as a relatable person, with lines of dialogue) whatsoever throughout the game. I’m talking, here, about Lucian the Something, who I think had a few waypoint statues made in his honour, and was mentioned fleetingly in dialogues here and there.
It's unfortunate that I found the most dull portion of the game to be the ending. Suddenly they drop Lucian out of no where, and Dallis is suddenly leaking exposition and explanations for her actions. I thought they were gonna make a big deal out of Lucian, but I barely had the dialogue option to say "Holy hell Lucian is alive and you are working for him?!" Let alone question how truthful the seemingly deceitful Dallis was. Braccus felt crammed in and the boss fight to follow was horrendously dull. The Kraken was cool looking, but did almost nothing besides mimic the Braccus Rex fight from the first game, just without any interesting mechanics and with FAR less climactic summons. And as a lone wolf my 2H friend 2 shot lucian without even using Onslaught and the fight just ended. My most notable gripe is that the God King didn't even make an appearance, and given the epilogue it seems like they are saving him for a DLC or something.
The timing of the lashes of rain during what is, for me anyway, the game’s second best battle – The Drillworm and Alexander – makes for some great visual drama.
I am doing a second playthrough by myself on classic mode as Fane, with Ifan, Lohse, and Red Prince, and just today I got through the Alexander fight at the end of Fort Joy. I don't know what it was but that was actually a tough fight for me, almost more so than when my friend and I did it on tactician (which is also when we accidentally summoned a demon from the Braccus Rex helm at almost the worst possible moment). Any who, when the rain started and the music intensified, the feeling was epic. Add to it that I had to use several res scrolls during the fight, and that the drillworm appeared at a critical moment when I needed just a turn or two for respite and it all came together as an artistic masterpiece for me.
I suppose my posts keep coming back to boss battles, and I find that relates to what you said. Most of the boss battles blended together. Even acknowledging that most of my Act 2 and onwards experience is with two lone wolfs on classic, the fights were far too bland. This was made worse by source spells which relates to a disfunctional source system. Source vampirism has no genuine drawbacks besides being a moral jerk in some cases and combine that with the incredibly powerful source spells and all the unoriginal fights become inconveniences at best.
I have to agree that the oil slime fight was ingenious because even though my friend and I were feeling the power of being lonewolfs, we had no idea how to handle the fight (we were still too low level to have access to any big AOE source spells like lightning storm). It felt wonderful to realize that we had no idea what to expect, and that we would have to think on the fly.
I empathize with most of the rest of what you said, just wanted to point out where it really resonated with me.
