The game is much more challenging now, even with me playing on Explorer. I personally enjoy that, because it's CHALLENGING, but not quite UNFAIR like some describe it.
I do not, however, like how hard it seems to be to get ahold of good weapons, but that may just be because I can't find any really clear place to buy better weapons and I don't think crafting is fully in just yet.
Similarly on the note of crafting I've noticed things like the talk of the injured fellow near the cave mentioning how "He wouldn't drink a potion unless it were in booze" and then you can't, say, mix the bottle of beer with a minor healing potion - quite a surprise, to me, that something as neat as that isn't in.
A couple of my party members are behind me in level / XP because I recruited them AFTER getting enough XP to level up, and they get COMPLETELY reset, down to level one, when you class change them. Or possibly just when they do the proc to let their class be changed / selected - that should maybe be addressed.
Durability - love the changes to it.
Enemies aside from combat - fair, but I'm in Explorer, and even then sometimes they feel too strong, being able to dish out reliably twice my damage.
Surfaces staying permanently ; actually, I quite enjoy this one, though I think that CLOUDS should maybe all disperse. I haven't gotten bless just yet, but I did notice (and wonder if it was intentional or not) that when I encountered Nerofire on the beach after lots of flames and explosions, after beating the void turtles that Necrofire did not go away on the ground.
Either way, I enjoy the perma surfaces, because it makes me have to think tactically OUTSIDE of combat, instead of just deciding to AFK for about thirty seconds after it to grab a water or whatever then use a bedroll to undo any damage that might've been done.
The new defensive ability feels... way too situational to actually be worth investing in? Especially because if you get CCed the ways it mentions returning physical armor, you're generally going to die before you can benefit from it. At least Pain Reflect or whatever guarantees that you'll inconvenience enemies every time they target you directly.
Of course, that loops to a previous complaint of mine - enemies seem to be psychic and know what talents and skills and whatever I have, and in one attempt for example healed my zombie, despite zombie not saying it does anything to make you obviously healed / hurt in reverse like it does. And enemies seem to attack my characters with reflection with AoEs, at least at range (though I'm not sure if that actually prevents them from taking the backlash damage or not).
And that's the majority of what I've got to say here.
