reading through these, i like the point about act 1's depth because i think it's actually a pretty good reason as to why i like it so much. i think act 2 struggles with introducing a bunch of stuff at once that doesn't feel like it really registers unless you get super invested into it. act 1 has less overall "stuff" (3 characters and a couple of rooms) but they get a TON of cool stuff to look and think about. xefros and joey's entire houses/hives are chock full of detail that you can look over a ton of different times and find cool shit for every single one, and they generally feel like they have more life to them.

i think most of this depth in act 2 comes more from the characters and thus the world they inhabit (there's a FUCK TON of them), although a good chunk of them don't feel like they are anything really substantial. You get to learn some nice stuff about the world (like all the stuff with the jade-bloods were cool, i didn't know about that caretaker stuff before) but otherwise it feels a lot more flat compared to act 1. Not to say there aren't a couple of interesting trolls in act 2, but like diemen/mallek/a few others could get gurxed in act 3 and I don't think i'd blink at it.