I also kinda preferred Driftwood over Fort Joy. Probably since it has the Cyseal feel, and I do like the city-experience from the likes of Divinity 2:FoV more than the explorer gameplay of the original Divinity 2.
Also it helped it didn't have that horrible maze. Worst piece of gameplay in a Original Sin game so far, easily beating out the D:OS worst. The Imp Realm did a valiant try to trump it, though, but ultimately wasn't as badly designed as that maze.
ACT III did take a sudden leap. While I found the map design good, it really suffers from having a large area with fairly little to do. Since not a fan of the combat I welcomed the lack of a lot of combat, but it wasn't really replaced with anything in it's place. Basically just a giant fetchquest for 7 altars (although you can literally skip the entire island entirely) and the one thing that breaks it up (Imp Realm) is just... bad, really really bad. Amalia's wasn't so bad but it was basically press a couple buttons to win, just running past/over everything.
It offers some great ways to thin enemies out by having them fight each other, setting them up the bomb etc. but just like D:OS1 doing actually interesting ways of thinning foes rather than combat gives zero rewards, as all the XP is tied up in combat.
Can't give an opinion on Arx yet since I just started on it, by blasting foes that cannot climb from atop till they're dead. Hmmm... D:OS2 combat.
