I'm biased but because of the burnout I got from playing EA so many times I kind of hate Act 1 now because I know it like the back of my hand. Plus the plot is at its most uninteresting there IMO.
I'd honestly disagree.
Act 1 is the only time in the game where the plot is actually remotely decent.
The whole "Tadpole in brain is bad. Lets find a way to remove it" is simple, but effective.
To be fair, I think the difference might be that to me the setting/landscape? matters a lot. (I've seen that most people dislike the Sharran trials but the place is really awesome so I'm just happy to be there. Reminds me of how happy I was to be in the Dimitrescu castle in RE8. I extended that a lot just to do nothing and look at the place.)And standard nature mumbojumbo bores me. The hatred I hold for the Tieflings and the Druids is insurmountable, especially after playing through that whole ordeal so many times.
I found out so late you're supposed to tell Rolan to stay, because I just avoided talking to the tieflings altogether. I dislike the approach that I can talk to anyone because that means I don't know who has actually relevant stuff to say, and when 90% of them just say things like "Huh nice weather eh?" I just decide to ignore everyone instead of wasting my time.
I think Act 2 is the best act. It's got more striking aesthetics and is more contained, and doesn't seem rushed. I think Act 3 has very good moments, but suffers from rushing, particularly during the last battle, which is in its entirety fundamentally a mess. I feel like Raphael's fight would make for a better final battle. The way the 2 main villains (Orin, Gortash) are dealt with and explored as characters is also fundamentally flawed at its very base.
A good example to me of them working with the time restraints in Act 3 without failing is Astarion's quest: it's clearly been rushed, there are inconsistencies, and content has very obviously been chopped, but despite that the execution still works really well and comes across. Could it have been better? Sure, but we'll never know, and this version still works really well. Despite me knowing about the extent of the datamined content of his original quest, I remember not even remembering about it for a couple days and just being impressed. Can't say the same for Wyll or Gale's quest.
