I almost made it through all of Cyseal, and for my own frustration I need to put the game down. As per usual, I want to make it clear that these are my opinions and I do not presume to apply this to everyone.
1. Story is good but generic
Divinity has fantastic writing, but the overall story is just too generic for me. Undead invading a city is ok and all, but there was just nothing that pulled me in. Someone is trying to resurrect and old mage. Again, just generic stuff.
Cool, you described 1/3 of the story. Now keep playing.
2. Combat needs a serious tutorial
There are so many things in combat that I had to look up, or simply made no sense to me. I did not know you needed fire to clear poison and electricity clouds. I did not know that when you set things on fire and they had poison it would explode and hurt everything.
Try experimenting.
Although you could get a skill for backstabbing is not explained how you backstab.
What.
so many times i would misclick, trying to click on an enemy model, only to have them move slightly or me fumble one pixel, accidentally tell my character to move, then they use half their turn walking.
This is a legitimate complaint, yes.
In more than one situation it would require having a character that has fire or ice or poison in order to be effective.
Try having several different weapons of different elements.
In fact I do restart the game after putting in a solid 10 or 15 hours because I was unaware that you had to save up your skill points to advance your skills past a certain point (I know that there's a tooltip for but it was usually glossed over and I didn't know about it until it was too late).
You don't have to, I didn't do it my first run, and you can respect later.
one character with loremaster was not in view of the enemy or I forgot to look at during their turn I was screwed and I can't go back because I can only look at them during that characters turn.
So.. who's fault is that, that you aren't using your loremaster correctly?
Many times I would try blind a boss monster only to find out they could be blinded whereas other boss monsters could be blinded.
So? You don't need to be perfect every turn. Experiment, observe, adapt.
but I had the look of special guides just to figure out where to buy things I spent nearly an hour and a half in town
What.
And then having to spread the gold across multiple characters
Why do you have to do that?
7. Quests and map layout do not guide you where you need to go
More than once I would go to areas that I was not meant to go to. I would be level 3 fighting characters that were level 7 and 8. I understand some people like this because it teaches you that you can go everywhere you want, but by the same token there was no indicator to say that this was a dangerous area, and the only way I could of known is by going and dying at than reloading the game.
Or.. you can notice that the enemies are level 7 and then leave the area. That is an indicator, you know. Ctrl to see their level. Use Flee to run away. Teleport pyramid away. Lots of options.
In addition the quest dialog were very poor at guiding you where to go next
What
with many quests requiring you to complete other quest before continuation.
So?
Because the monster AI is not consistent they would go after my weaker members and kill them in two hits, because they are not designed to take a lot of damage.
So.. protect your weaker members, or give them better defense.
9. Henchmen are interchangeable
Unlike the blackout games of the past for each henchmen had an individual story and added much to the game all the henchmen in this one are completely interchangeable more than you care about other skills as they don't add it into the story or talk with you very much
So?
10. The game is not designed to allow multiple viable playstyles
Over half of your time in Cyseal is spent fighting the undead, and as a result those that use witchcraft and scoundrel skills are completely ineffective. Anything with bleeding or poison just simply doesn't work and a lot of the scoundrel skills just didn't work well. Early on if you do Geo Mansour your first summons is a spider who deals a lot of poisoning but all the undead are immune to poison. Even worse is when you fight the burning skeletons because now poison, bleeding, AND fire are ineffective. As a result nights and fighters were greatly overpowered, and when you found enemies that were susceptible to those elements the characters who uses elements did not shine.
You do know that Cyseal isn't the only part of the game, right? Anyways, again, adapt. You can change skills. You can get Midnight Oil, which slows everyone no matter their element. You can, again, get weapons of any element you want. You can also design a party that has magic of all four elements, so that you aren't stuck with only fire and earth.
Heck, in Cyseal/early game you can spend one point to add another element, and be completely effective. Fire and Earth not working? Get one point in Aero and/or Hydro and you get to use Blitz Bolt and/or Chilling Shard for no penalty.
I don't even have an offensive spell on my water mage. I just use Staff of Magus with a water staff and do more damage than anyone I have. Also, try Charming, which is a Scoundrel skill that is not ineffective (not to mention Trip and uhhh the stunning skill).
. A lot of earlier fights was also highly reliant on tactics more than characters skill...