I'm only up to the end of Act 2 myself(finished it yesterday night). I vehemently disagree about Act 1, which I feel was handled horribly. I wish it didn't rush through reuniting Class VII back together as quickly as it did. The reunion with Machias felt truly touching, but I feel there wasn't enough buildup between that and the next reunion and so on and by the time I got to Jusis it felt rather lackluster. I wish there was more challenge to finding each Class VII member. Like if Jusis was a lot more serious about not joining them again at first, that would've been nice or if they didn't all reunite by the end of Act 1. Another thing is that for Act I, the hub town is Ymir and its NPCs feel a lot less interesting than Trista's, most likely partially because it's only the hub town for Act 1.
Intermission was fine, no real problem with that. Interesting insight on some of the villain characters(Phantom Thief in particular).
Act 2 feels almost criminal in some aspects. Because your party choices are so flexible, each optional party member's lines feel a lot more generic which makes sense because they can't plan minor events around any particular character since they might not be on the player's party at any given moment. Some characters are locked on to the party for specific parts but that's mainly to remedy the problem for more major scenes and plot points. The really minor scenes (the heart and soul of Trails games) feel less charming like there was less effort put into each line.
Act 2 did some things great though. Getting on the Courageous for the first time felt absolutely amazing. Finding your non-Class VII classmates at first felt absolutely amazing too, and the game becoming a lot more open-world than before felt like the world really had expanded. Then the repetitiveness of each cycle starts to wear down. Also the story sections (seizing each new city you previously went to in the previous game) after you complete all the side quests feel poorly developed and went by a bit too quickly, especially the Trista one. And the Shrine temple marathon near the end was atrocious. It was much worse than Sky SC's temple runs.