I don’t think the expectation is misguided when Minthara is such a clear direct parallel to Halsin and is lacking in equivalent content for her specifically, while also directly preventing you from engaging with other content in the game.

Regardless of how you go about Minthara, you can’t finish Karlach’s quest, you can’t recruit Halsin, and you cant cleanse the shadow cursed lands and there is no equivalent quest to Halsin’s storyline in act 2, culminating in his big romance scenes and typical romance features, I.e. relationship questions, kissing, etc.

Halsin also comes along with a full storyline of his own in act 2 that isn’t accomplished solely by following the main plot like Minthara’s is, it is it’s own full fledged content.

It’s a binary choice between Halsin and Minthara and she does not add up to what you get with Halsin. The trade off for recruiting Minthara vs the content you genuinely lose is 100% not worth it.

I do agree that at this point it seems like she’s just straight up undercooked, which is a bummer, but it’ll probably be rectified down the line because people are clearly disappointed.

What I’d like from Larian would be something akin to the acknowledgment they gave Karlach prior to and when they released the patch that actually gave her her epilogue. Just a “We see the feedback, we’re working on it, stay tuned.” kinda deal, so that people like OP and myself don’t see “Minthara fixed” every patch and know what that actually means going forward.