It is obvious that the Emperor sould've been one of the pillar of the story, but he feels awkward and very out of place, one of the victims of a last minute rewrite I suspect. While everyone else falls to thier place so to speak, he just hangs in the air, the entire game. While Daisy was obviously malicious and untrustwhorthy she fited more into the entire setting, seducing us, tempting us with power, showing us Baldur's Gate under siege, claiming she wants to help - and actualy helping us when we almost turn - but she obviously has other agendas, and she's not what she's showing herself to be. She was an interesting character, Daisy was exactly how Raphael described himself: A friend? Potentially. An adversary? Conceivably. A saviour? Now that's for certain.
Meanwhile the Emperor/Guardian falls very short, he's this ideal little helper who always on our side and offers us free power, lowering the stakes to zero. And I think the last part near the end game where it absolutly falls apart. We can make a choice of freeing Orpheus or let the Emperor absorb it. I can't compreheand why can't we free Orpheaus without pissing off the Emperor, it was never explain why does he have a meta-grudge againts Orpheus, and what I found super strange, he's not just abandoning us like, "okay, then I'm done protecting you, you're on your own" he sides with THE ELDERBRAIN. And in the last fight where we fight the brain he genuienly tries to hinder us from stoping the grand design, just because we freed Orpheus. All this sh*t about how he wants to stop the brain and retain his free will just to side with it in the last minute, what an absolute rubish of a story-telling. I was actualy baffled when I saw him with the mind-controlled red dragon I couldn't belive someone gave this a green-light. This is one of the more severe case where the narrative and the story falls apart, but it's overall full of inconsistencies where I raised my eyebrow.
As for the tadpole. I understand that it might have been a design decision to make the illithid powers alignment neutral so nobody missing out on them, however creating zero-stake choices in RPGs especialy so close to the main-plot is never a good idea, and it falls flat here too. This new system where insted of evovling a single tadpole to gobble up a sh*tload of tadpoles to your brain is also very dumb and feels super out of place. We had class specific tadpole powers those were also cut or rearanged into universal, which I personaly dislike the most.
Frankly I hate it how the tadpoles were devalued. It was implied by the narrative multiple times how they are special because they are infused with shadow magic, how the true-souls and we were special because of the tadpole. That's why in Act 1 the lackeys of the Absolute - the goblins, the gnolls, the duergar (this was also retconned for somereason) - were branded, and the True Souls had tadpole. The branding was also a deadend in the story and I don't understand why, instead by the end of the game, every grunt is runing around with a tadpole in thier head, and it's really ruining the narrative they set up in Act 1.
