BG2 is one of those games I wish the gameplay would let me recommend. The story is brilliant and Jon Irenicus is an amazing villain, capped by David Warner’s performance, still to this day one of my favorite voice acting performances in a game.
I think the initial premise might have been flawed from the start on the gameplay front anyway. Vincke’s already talked about how difficult it would be to tack on a sequel expansion/DLC to BG3 because of how crazy D&D gets at high levels, and Bioware was still pioneering the artificial DM concept back in 2000 to begin with.