Like the title says, I'm wondering if Pillars 2 is worth playing.

A little background. Baldur's Gate 1/2 and Planescape: Torment, and the recent Divinity games are some of my favorite CRPGs. I even liked the first Icewind Dale, since I found the setting and atmosphere engaging. I don't necessarily need an amazing story, just a good balance between solid mechanics and a compelling setting will do just fine.

That being said I found Pillars 1 to be a pretty big disappointment. I thought it took itself way too seriously, and found the dialogue and writing too dry to be engaging after many hours of play. I made it to the 3rd act before dropping it... The setting, while deep, felt pretty bland. That and the combat felt... off. It wasn't a bad game (far from it) I just found it lacking in many ways.

I've heard mixed things about Pillars 2. Some seem to think it greatly improves on 1, while others think it worse. So, given my preferences should I give Pillars 2 a shot? Thoughts and opinions welcome, just no spoilers please :)

Deadfire has some more snark options in dialogues and companions banter more. The combat is a little more obvious this time around in what stats you want and how best to use your abilities. Character roles and advancement is clearer now even with the addition of multi classing.

You can manipulate, piss off, betray and kill quite a few quest givers and many of the story given companions. There are quite a lot more weapons and armours (and pets) to find that can boost how effective your characters play. There are player created mods.

If you enjoyed the Divinity turn based titles, Deadfire has a turn based option now (requires a separate playthrough). It is a bit different to the real time with pause mode, swapping (rtwp) speed and accuracy dominance for (tbm) debuff and aoe dominance.

The game opts to give you relatively free access to most of the entire map via your own ship, which can make the flow of the story a bit weird and risks missing a lot of content, in return for a lot of exploration and choice in the order some things play out.

I found the use of a chase based plot device a bit frustrating, given the gameplay is all about completing quests, building out your characters and dealing with your party member's (and others) hangups. To talk much about the story risks spoiling it. I liked it, but then I enjoy thinking about societies that rely heavily on religion.

Yes, it is.
But not for the main story which is really, really bad. Writing is really uneven, and companions even more uneven, sometimes just bad. Eder, for example, was pretty cool character in the first game, in the second he's ... bleh.

Side quests are fun, world exploration is fun, at least to an extent, multiclassing is fun, many unique items that can be upgraded are fun, boss fights, I mostly mean world bosses, although very difficult and somewhat cheesy are also fun.

Also, there are some cool mods, that can improve or significantly change gameplay, although version 5.0 made most of them not working properly.
So, in general it's a mixed bag, but pretty enjoyable for what it's worth.