Act 2. Cool atmosphere, consistent story and tone, memorable villains and boss fights, impactful decisions.
Surprised to see someone else who enjoys Act 2! Act 2 was my favorite act in my first playthrough, though now I appreciate different acts at different times depending on who I'm playing and what role. Nightsong and the interactions with Shadowheart through the act really struck a chord with the character I was playing and story I was telling. Trying to spoil as little as possible, there were great moments that surprised me in how I was able to act, and there were moments I felt characters on their own acted in a way I didn't expect based on genre tropes.
Also I'm a sucker for music and this is where I really started to fall in love with the soundtrack. Constantly playing it when I'm not playing the game.
Act 3 feels haphazard like Act 1, and also a bunch of problems about the whole game culminate in it - like your level and power maxing early on and the difficulty being gone. It ruins the whole gravitas of some villain taunting you when you just know you'll probably obliterate them in one or two rounds.
Does everyone think the game was too easy? Even in their first playthrough? I struggled from the beginning, and in Act 3 I faced arguably the biggest challenges of the game despite the heightened power. Granted I had an odd party composition of Warlock, Warlock, Cleric, Rogue.
I skipped a good amount of content, by choice or forced by my choices. I was only level 8 or 9 as I recall. I found myself hostile with the first Steel Watcher and Flaming Fist group you engage and I could NOT find a way to overcome it. At least not by walking straight into it as was my first instinct. I was roleplaying a very belligerent and confident party lead who always met people face-to-face, despite partying with a Trickery Cleric and Assassination Rogue and having no real frontliner with just 2 Warlocks to "round" that out. Not meta. Not meta at all. Right away, it put a fear and respect in me that lasted for the whole act and changed the way I approached it. I probably could have overcome it by being sneaky and setting up a proper underhanded fight with none of the starting dialogue, but that would have been aggressively meta and not roleplaying. I thought a number of other encounters were appreciably difficult and had hugely satisfying puzzle-piece-in-place fist pumping moments, as well.
I have developed my skills and knowledge significantly since then and encounter difficulty drops like 80% just in having experienced it once before and knowing what to expect. So to an extent I agree that the game is pretty easy now. Have done things like finish Act 2 at level 6. I suppose the game has to be easy enough if I beat it first time through with the party composition I had, and the terribly straightforward and brute methods I often took with a decidedly not brutish party! Heavy roleplaying, light strategy.
Even for me now, and I imagine the experienced and meta players, aren't certain potential encounters like Gortash in the audience chamber with his full steel watch practically impossible? I'm sure several people have done it, but that's at least one example of preventing most people from being an overconfident, belligerent aggressor, I expect. If nothing else, waiting for all those NPCs to take their turns is a challenge...
Anyway that's all to say that complaints about low difficulty strike me as leveraging large amounts of strategy, experience, meta knowledge, and broken Larian things. Maybe there could be something more for the people running 4 Tavern Brawler Barbarians, or Monks, or Paladins or whatever - plenty of broken stuff - but the game isn't supposed to be a brutally difficult min/max fest. It should be playable even for a first timer or dedicated roleplayer with a mishmash party (just like in tabletop), rather than a meta chaser looking for the highest competitor. Do you really want to fight a
Neutronium Golem or something?
