Squadron has this kit as part of their comsale at a very good price. Anyone have any thoughts as to the quality of this kit?

Not on that particular kit ... but I would bet my last penny that the tracks will be rubbish... so aftermarket needed for that probably. All of these older Italeri kits .. and probably newer one have 2 piece per side tracks that are impossible to hide both seams.
The good news is the IS2 took severe beatings so you could literally cut off anything you didnt like ... fenders, gun lock, lights, external fuel drums, tools, etc. And just model the shell and running gear for a nice model. I like italeri and believe you could make a nice model of it... but do allow for tracks.

See the article on building Dragons IS2 on Missing links . Might give you some ideas. As you can see from the dragon model it has its problems as well!