Here's my rant after finishing the game. I had a great ~100 hours of fun! (That is some cheap quality entertainment!) There is a lot that could be improved though: it could be even better.
I agree with most of the points in
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=555324#Post555324I played on the default difficulty (never touched the setting). As an old baldur's gate guy, I guess I should have got straight for maximum. I played without looking anything up, so I really wasn't able to design my builds well (Perception not applying to spells isn't clear from the ingame descriptions for one example). I hear now that there is a respec option somewhere, but I never saw that. My characters ended up overpowered anyway though: the flexibility of how you spend your points as you level is fantastic. I had tons of unspent points at the end though: I just didn't need to improve anything.
I have no idea how good armor is or the various saving throw related skills. Its hard to decide between 50 armor or an constitution point. Once I'd played for a while, I got an idea of how good the stat points were (Even numbered speeds suck, more AP per turn than max AP is a waste, things like that that I learned the hard way but could correct with gear), but I was in the dark making my build initially. I can understand block percentage, but the rest is unintelligible: how do I compare a point in bodybuilding vs some amount or armor, vs a constitution point vs resistances? The preview of weapon damage was great, but nothing that concrete for defense. I'd love to have the numbers accessible.
The only thing I crafted was poisoned cheese. Based on what I read after winning, looks like I could have been much more overpowered if I'd just used up my blank skill books, and modded my weapons. I never ate any food, use any arrows, and I only used ~3 scrolls). So much unnecessary junk to shovel around (I wish I could send all to homestead on arrows and ingredients. Sort by type then so many things to click on and send away...)
So some other things: I generally enjoy finding creative ways to do things. What I think could be improved are the really boring easy ways to skip or trivialize everything, and clear bugs.
I'm throwing all this in a spoiler tag, since its full of really easy ways to win/skip most of the content.
It seemed like a ton of stuff could be accomplished by pyramid throwing. I'm not sure if these are bugs, but you could for example:
Throw a pyramid up the cliff into the phantom forest to get around the poison entry. You could throw a pyramid into the source temple central area from the bridge (get around the locked door saying your not ready) and throw a pyramid around the book case through the door in the back to skip what ever the trials are (I skipped them, I don't know what they are). You can wander around parts of the map that appear to not have an AI grid where you can't walk, but you can chain pyramid throw. I got into some library place this way and did a boss fight, but I have no idea how you are supposed to get in there. You can skip the elemental puzzle in the cave (just toss a pyramid down to the prize area from the overlook). A pyramid threw also got across a gap in the temple of death that seemed uncrossable otherwise. My default approach for how to get somewhere became first try to throw a pyramid. It almost always worked.
Banning throwing pyramids to un-walkable locations would fix the clearly bug examples of this (but leave most of the tricks working).
There were also a ton of cases where teleporting through metal bars was overpowered or broken. I tended to bust people out of jail that way, but they acted all locked up until you opened the door (Including the forest spirit in the phantom forest). Also, putting an all melee demon boss in a room with a cell you can teleport him (or you) into seems way too easy (He can't damage you if you throw him in, you you can hit him with range). Especially given that he has the key, but can't escape his own jail cell. Its also great for raiding treasure rooms (opening the door is bad, teleport in angers no one)
Also being able to win every single fight in the game with one mage by attack then invisible every turn (or every 4 turns if your INT sucks) seems way overpowered. There might be some exceptions, but it seemed invincible the couple time I tied it. You can combine with with a summon to get the enemies to move around without risking any damage to yourself.
Being able to kill or mostly kill enemies without starting combat is also pretty overpowered. Friendlies can be attacked several times before they get mad, usually enough to get them low health.
Combine this with feather fall to telaport them into what ever formation you want before the fight starts (throw one guy half way across the map, kill and repeat, or pile in a heap for area effect), and it seemed way too easy so I generally didn't bother (I used it once when I thought of it)
Oil can be used to get enemies that are out of sight but in range to walk around and burn slowly to death without starting combat (I did Diederik, Baron of Bones partly using this. Killed half his guys before the fight started). I think other non-line of sight spells (like Boulder bash and headvice can do this as well). Oil can also make the White Witch walk out of the block of ice she is frozen in (you can't talk to her though, so it doesn't help).
There are few places where you can teleport enemies into lava. Even Diederik, Baron of Bones has a lava pit you can pull him to for a 1 shot kill (Even with that, he was hard at level 5). I think this is fine, since its situational. I can only think of one area where you can win multiple fights in a row by throwing everyone in the lava.
Balance wise, CC was way over powered (along with non-line of sight spells). My mage could keep 6+ enemies CCed, and have action points for attacks or heals. For the second half of the game, it was rare for me to get attacked once during a fight. I could even hold off an invulnerable guy with teleports. Being able to blind, freezing touch, and boulder bash every single turn with one mage seemed over powered. I could do ~8 CC in a turn if I needed to, some hitting multiple targets most lasting 3 turns. I could also summon and cast invisible every turn. High intelligence -> almost all cool-downs are 1 is overpowered.
Blind specifically seemed broken. When I'm blinded, I can still run around and attack (just at short range). Enemies just stop taking any action at all. I heavily overused blind (I often had every enemy blinded if I didn't knock them down first or freeze them on accident).
I went ~3+ levels without buying any new skills or spending any points or swapping any gear once since nothing was hard. Given that I skipped a ton of content, that seems bad. I could win stuff above my level easily, but ended up always fighting lower level stuff almost all the game.
I thought the Tenebrium weapons not being helped by the relevant weapon type specific skills was a bug. I almost didn't notice it. It's an odd design choice: it would be good if it was clear how it worked, OR worked in the expected way.
End of game thoughts:
I have't figured out how to kill those darn invulnerable demons (void aura) or the death knights. I got the spell, but I guess I missed the blood somewhere. Its kinda odd I can kill the person who's blood I need, but I can't get their blood, and thus can get stuck in an un-winnable state in the final fight (this happened to me the first time). I had to load a save and find the other way to win.
I never figured out how to end the endless fire storm at the end of time. The volume of its audio really spoiled the ambiance for a lot of the most important dialog scenes in the game. Re-balancing the audio there would be great. Worrying about my glass cannon mages burning to death during those moments didn't help either, but wasn't really an issue by end game.
The ending text exactly fix how I role played my characters, which impressed me. I didn't think it was going to work out that well, given the issues I had with them arguing: The discussion template seemed to be: Char A takes position, Char B takes position, Char A has chance to concede, Char B can not concede after taking a position, only argue. There were a couple of times I saved and loaded so the rock paper scissors could come out with B conceding (It was never clear who would win if I skipped that).
I specifically didn't do any of the joining or impersonating the immaculate stuff (screw them). I have to wonder if some of that was important.
My biggest UI annoyance: If I had a spell selected, and pressed some UI button (to change my mind about what to do, ex: to delay my turn) I often just casted the spell targeted at under the button. Very annoying. That and purchased secrets disappearing from my map where the most annoying bugs.
I'd like a warning before giving a merchant Rot. When I'm selling all my crap, killing the buyer on accident is kinda annoying (I wonder if there is a way to use that to your advantage: you can sell to pretty much anyone who will talk, even if they don't have anything to sell to you).
I really disliked the group of slavers you run into. Your choices were tolerate their views on slaves not being people and leave, or pay the troll for them. I payed the toll then killed them (and for some reason the troll attacked me) and all the slaves disappeared (odd).
There were also a couple of odd cases where the only option was to claim to be an immaculate. Given that I didn't do that quest, and usually had an option to claim otherwise (and have to fight) it was odd not to have another option some times.
I also saved the Geomancer assistant guy who was about to get killed (a simple teleport was enough). That got things into a odd state though. Maybe I broke something.
Anyway, I loved the game but I think I skipped half of it. I wish I could go finish up all those quests after winning. I guess I get to decide between another playthrough, and loading up an pre-win save and finishing them.
I think my most fun fight was trying to do Diederik, Baron of Bones at level 4, and having to come back at level 5. I wish I ran into other fights that were above my level. I think it only happened one other time. I would have liked to do the final fight around level 18, but I ended up being 21 by the time I got there.
Is everything completeable without pyramid throwing and teleport spells? I think if I play without those, I'll do things how you are supposed to, but I don't want to actually get stuck if they are needed. There are at least 6 places I got to with prymid throwing that I didn't discover another way to get to but I think are reachable.
Protip: pick up locked chests. Its way easier to carry them than go back for them! Some fancy chests are are indestructible obstacles you can place and sell for good money too!
