So, I am doing a replay on mac a good while after finishing it on playstation.
I remember at the end rushing through it on PS as I got bored of repetitive ship battles and a stale storyline. I tried going a different route this time and now after a good talk with Eothas and starting a new chapter in the storyline....I'm inclined to go to the next part in the story and just finish it ASAP instead of the 101 sideplots because....Well, as an RPG gamer both paper and PC for 30 years, this is just dull beyond comprehension.
Often, things don't make sense, like liberating an NPC and telling them to go rest in your boat while you clear the area, and they're in your ship in ship management, but the next encounter the NPC suddenly speaks up, so they're present - But click on your boat and they're there, too? Same for a lot of quests, even the main one: If you don't follow the linear way of doing things (often you're told very heavy handedly), you will get a ton of text about things having happened or you supposedly did, but actually didn't. Sail to Ashen Maw where Eothas is in your first chapter instead of following the inear story for instance, it's hilarious.
Also: If the history of RPGs taught anything, it's that people love high fantasy, green fields, lush exploration in them, etc., from Tolkien, to early D&D, to Baldur's gate, etc.; Ad&D in the 80s and 90s also thought people needed new textures, and tried to push them into Arabic settings, planeswalking, Pirate settings in far off lands like this game, and more. Guess where those settings were 5 to 10 years later due to popularity and sales? So yeah, POE2 didn't sell well even before people knew how it played, while a lot bought and liked POE1, maybe think a bit how the announcement about the whole pirate and sailing thing went down, eh? 100x the same boat fight gets repetitive and dull as hell too.