The general direction for encounters goes down somewhere around Varnhold - also the time where your party begins to rapidly advance in power - which exacerbates the whole issue.
As expected, low level D&D is always best D&D, and it's same here.
On occasion it goes back to sparks of brilliance (some of dungeons, some of bosses, 2 gnomes, wild hunt - if only it had some plot and wasn't all copypasted zerg-rushes, etc.) but then returns to:
- Prebuff and kill all spriggans (this is the first arguably REALLY BAD location in the game)
- Prebuff and kill all cyclops. turn around corner. 3 more cyclops. turn around corner. 5 more cyclops.
- Prebuff and kill all dumbfuck bards
- Prebuff and kill all irovetti guards
Just compare that to Sycamore - 2 rival factions, neutral animals, wolfs, solo mini-bosses, fey-kangax, undead, poison, 4 party fights, in that tutorial location game throws more new stuff on you than whole Varnhold chapter combined. Many monsters even have dialogue. Many monsters also have unique mini mini bosses with player classes (mite butcher torturing lone kobold in their cells is some fey/rogue hybrid, very cute).
Oh and random encounters? ElderElementalsMarches.
As is they add nothing to the game, remove them all except plot ones.
And I can absolutely assure you that in my game on hard with that 60AC knife master things are WAY easier than on that challenging run.
I have a lot more control over myself, so my first playthrough was on Hard with vanilla companions only, no multi-classing.
Unobtrusive spell effects: finally someone who gets it right
I nominate Web effect in this game as the best Web effect for Web spell in any D&D game, ever.