For me it's just a matter of the setting of Deadfire Archipelago being too well-known and not at all mysterious after a dozen of hours. When in Dyrwood, even if the quests were constructed in a more typical manner, I couldn't predict what would happen to me. In Deadfire I could see too many things coming, like when there was this quest with a guy who left something in Luminous Bathhouse, I had just from the journal context known that he is up to no good. There is a story in every Deadfire quest, but I can see the ending right away in too many instances (of course there are some great exceptions like Palleginas quest or the whole animancy project, but the wateshaper school quest is spoiled by the obvious clue from the staue ages before anything happens there and even what occurs in the end couldn't make it up to me). The pirate setting has a far more generic feeling to it than the mysterious and dark Dyrwood which is ravaged by wars, lifeless children and ancient mysteries. The corrupted adra and all the engwithan stuff in the Deadfire isn't fleshed out. The main quest feels like another game to me, with it taking place mostly in designated areas rather than in the world organically. Why not leave more, even minor ties to the main plot in the whole big, open game world of Deadfire? In Pillars One there where ties to the hollowborn everywhere, you could feel it, while here you get the dissonance between 5 (or something like that) quests regarding the big walking adra giant statue wanting to change the world as we know it and the yarr-harr piratey fun with mateys and savages and trading companies eluding you.
Also there is no real dungeon in this game, like Caed Nua was in the first Pillars. The combat is great but the auto ai + unbalanced highest difficulties spoil the experience and take away the fun of experimenting with the multiclassing and different party compositions. When I try replaying the game I get tired of it too easily because of the scripted events that I know too well, but I suppose it's my fault because I already spent 100+ hours in the game All in all I can't complain much, it's worth the money but sadly lacks the PoE 1 magic Bugfixes and additional content, mainly dungeons and memorable, big questlines could do this game a great service - PoE 1 also wasn't perfect at the release. Patches and DLCs I believe in your power!