tbh cant get enough of the game. its much bigger than the first one and i love it for that reason. i've always been one to exhaust every exploration option before proceeding with the main quest, and this game allows for a ton of that. although sometimes i do so in vain, because there is that metroidvania element of "you can only access this particular area with an item/ability you wont get until later." was the same way in the 2018 one to be fair, with the light bridges, exploding crystals, hels bramble
WAY more of the side quests/favors than the first game... though to an extent its a quality>quan y effect. in the first game, a vast majority of the Favors were these pretty long, grandiose quests, like finding the dwarven king, freeing dragons, going through the mines to find andvari's ring, etc. in this one, some of them are pretty underwhelming. but theres so many that you will still find a good amount of high quality ones
a lot of very good miniboss encounters as well, a huge upgrade to 2018 in terms of enemy/boss variety