Overall I loved the game and in most regards it is extremely well crafted and an utter blast to explore. So first off I'm going to address the game by act overall then get into some encounter reviews and mechanical analysis. So let's begin.
Act 1: This was a great opener and overall nothing felt over the top or too difficult to manage. I never had a raised eyebrow going "Well that was bs," until the Lady Vengeance fight and aftermath. The fight itself was a bit perplexing until several defeats later figuring out how to pull it off. This fight reminded me a lot of some of the frustration that occurred during the void dragon fight in DOS 1 where the AI can easily take down Astarte if you aren't pouring on the boosts and heals with half your ap a turn. When I was forced to protect Malady to escape Dallis she died very swiftly the first few attempts. I had to teleport everyone to her and spend about 80% of my turns healing and buffing her to survive the encounter. I don't like babysitting NPCs (this will come up again) and forcing my party to effectively disengage from combat to keep an NPC alive. After beating this fight I found it a bit jarring when I discovered my two unrecruited companions had been killed off. I think it may have been hinted at (can't remember) but after investing in everyone throughout act 1 hoping to swap them in and out as needed for party comps and quests I had expended a lot of resources acquiring skillbooks, weapons, and armor to kit them up for the next chapter. Not only were they killed off (which I was ok with narratively) I lost everything that was on them with not a thing returned from them. I did everything possible prior to the Alexander fight so I didn't have too much trouble there as others have so I can't speak to balance problems there.
Act 2: I have mixed feelings here. Overall this was a good segment. I really enjoyed the exploration and build up of the companion's stories. I liked a number of the questlines and such presented here and the areas were all aesthetically pretty cool. However the fights overall seemed to vary wildly from cakewalk, standard fare, all the way to wondering what in the demon kissed arse just happened. I savescum a lot in Divinity but I had to abuse it heavily throughout act 2 and I will address some of its encounters a little later. So overall great act but some glaring balance issues in some fights.
Act 3: This act in general felt really good. I never felt cheesed by the AI here and overall it felt like enemies matched player power level here. I will say Delorus needs to be scaled properly if you happen to find him here. Having him level 9 fighting against level 18s is just absurd and I had to have him chill way in the backfield out of the fights just to get him to where he needed to go alive. I wanted to have him in the fights but any enemy that breathed on him insta-gibbed him or two-pieced him. he needs to be made level appropriate here if he is going to be an active combatant. Other than that most of the act went swimmingly albeit more briefly than the other acts as the Nameless Isle was much smaller than Driftwood and felt smaller than Fort Joy (I could be wrong there). The conversations before the attempted ascension while good also irked me slightly. I loved my companions and in my playthrough I was preparing myself for the worst with the Red Prince because although he considered my Ifan a good friend and all, his dialogue all pointed to him pursuing divinity with a passion. So when it came down to this long built up showdown I was expecting a little more resistance from my companions, especially Red Prince. However when it actually happened they were all easily swayed to give it to me. It felt way too easy and the subsequent fight felt super easy as a result (I killed Lohse and Sebille in 2 rounds with neither of them getting off a single attack). To me that encounter had so much build up. The gods all painted it as I was going to have an epic showdown with my allies and it just fell a little flat for me. Also Dallis waltzing in with the Aeteran felt odd too. I'll get to her later. So for all its buildup everything in the academy just felt like it didn't hit home well enough.
Act 4: This was a mess for me really. Fights here varied wildly like in Act 2 but those problems being exacerbated severely. I'll go into specifics in the encounters section. The narrative was fine here up until the ending. Dallis, something about all the reveals here just irked me. Not only was she Fane's daughter (which was fine albeit out of left field), Braccus felt tossed in as a DOS 1 reference and after just destroying his ass for the second time in DOS 1 after having already been stopped once before the events of the game just felt weird and like a very unnecessary retread. I may have just had ill emotions toward it due to the fight that followed. It was a good surprise don't get me wrong with the reveal, it just felt like he wasn't needed here. Back on the subject of Dallis she wasn't just an eternal but a dragon knight too? That was head scratching and honestly it was starting to feel like they were just throwing whatever they could on Dallis to make her more powerful. She was fine in Act 1 but in Act 3 and 4 everything about her just felt so unearned. Popping in despite not being godwoken at the end of Act 3 to stop ascension and then being a dragon knight in Act 4. Villains should always be powerful but their power should feel acceptable and earned and not that they are powerful because "well they are evil and mighty." If the power comes out of left it field it feels jarring not intimidating.
So on to encounters.
Act 1: The only issue I had here encounter wise was the Lady Vengeance and the arena. The only problem with the arena is that you really need to be either perfectly geared or over leveled to succeed. For a level 3 fight it feels closer to level 5. The lady vengeance fight as previously mentioned was frustrating in that if you didn't do things perfectly the two gheists and other cronies would destroy Malady very quickly. They would willingly eat several attacks of opportunity to waltz passed me and beat the hell out of malady because the could. In DOS 1 enemies seldom ate attacks of opportunity because it was often highly dangerous to their health. In DOS 2 enemies will often just take them without a care.
Act 2: There's a few fights here I'd like to talk about.
Hannag: What in god's name was this crap. For a level 13 fight you have to be abusing mechanics, perfectly geared, lucky as hell, and then some in order to succeed. If you elect to fight here she suicides for the God King and spawns several rifts that crap out voidwoken like candy. These voidwoken all hit like trucks and eventually heavily outnumber you because you can't burst them down fast enough unless you are overlevelled. Then she pops back up insta-gibbing party members every other turn with a lava spell. This fight was extremely frustrating and upon victory was unsatisfying and left you feeling more annoyed that you had to go through that than the rewards are worth having acquired.
Black Pits: This fight was fine at first, then the voidwoken showed up in fiery force. This fight wouldn't have been so bad if the insane amount of necrofire didn't make my computer want to cry and Gwydian wasn't a imbecile that wanted so badly to burn to death. Even using bless here to negate the necrofire was useless as once a voidwoken took any damage or leapt up (which they can do from quite a ways out) will reignite it all back into cursed fire. I did the fight without ever getting wiped, only having to reload because Gwydian decided incinerating himself sounded like a jolly old time. I don't think Im the only once who has experienced sever performance issues here so I think something may need to be reevaluated in this fight to make it less intensive on the system. It was the only point in the game where I had a performance issue and I have a good computer.
Alice Aliceson: This fight was quite a bit of bollocks. Make sure you save before talking to her (not while talking to her) but BEFORE talking to her. If you meet her and are unprepared she straight up tpks you in her first action. I was under leveled at first and had to come back but even in an equal level fight she nuked me immediately. I had to send my tank in alone to eat it with a crap ton of buffs and some fire resist potions to eat the first round before pyramiding in the rest of the party to fight her, and then I had to burst and hard CC her the whole fight or else she would tpk the party if she got a turn. She feels wholly unfair unbalanced. I personally despise fights that are basically just a giant middle finger of death to a whole, even well equipped, party.
The Eternal Aeteran:
(Shakes Head) This fight, I tell you what. Who thought the AI violating all the combat rules set in place was a good idea. Not only is she capable of dropping summons like a patron drops money at a strip club she will stunlock and insta-gib your party before a single one of them gets to act unless you prepare to the extreme before hand. And thats not before she wrecks you the first time to alert you to the fact that she is broken as hell. She violates cooldown rules, the 1 summon rule, steals your source with ease, and is just beyond powerful for her level. A lot of the Act 2 bosses have this problem of just having a giant "Your party (or a party member) is dead card up their sleeve and it feels unfair." It shouldn't feel like you had to have already played through once to be able to handle fights.
Mamma Dearest and Sahelia: Getting her out of there once a fight broke out was a serious pain in the ass. Mamma Dearest violates AP standards and moves absurdly far and deals absurd damage. Not to mention she will run past you eating attacks of opportunity just to strike down Sahelia in one-two shots with an all in. And she'll cripple her if she doesn't outright kill her making it impossible to move her away from Mamma Dearest. It made getting Sahelia out of the lone wolf camp more of a headache than it needed to be.
Act 3: No noteworthy fights I can think of.
Act 4: Where to begin here....
Cursed Revenants: Just remove these bastards from the game and replace them with a non-gimmicky and less atrociously obnoxious foe. If you are lacking source before engaging I hope you saved pretty recently because this fight will NEVER EVER END. If you aren't able to bless the crap out of the area you will never see an end to this fight as death only makes them respawn.
Source Battle Puppets: In the death room if the fight goes on long enough you will get stuck in an infinite loop where you never get a turn again because if they die they respawn and immediately get a turn which they then use to run towards a lever and get murder stabbed by the traps over and over again for eternity.
Shadow Prince: Arrow Storm after Arrow Storm. Better use your first turns to scatter because you can't preemptively position and if you don't you will get a tpk of doom from three arrow storms in a row. It feels bad man.
The Doctor: Is this fight even possible without cheesing it? The boss has way more health and armor then you could ever hope to take down before he demolishes you in his first turn (btw he starts so basically just kiss your ass goodbye). I had to break this fight by sneaking and casting a hailstorm to knock him down then hard CC him to death before he could ever transform then mop up the manageable nurses.
The Final Fight: In my version where I had to deal with everyone I had to cheese the fight by using deathfog boxes from the Arx sewers to eliminate half the enemies in the first round. Now I could get the fight to phase 2 without it but once in phase 2 I guess we are way more damn important than Braccus Rex who Dallis and Lucian just before seemed all about killing. Seriously they say "Kill him now" repeatedly only to turn right around and focus everything they have on killing you instead. They completely ignore the big ass kraken trying to kill them as well. Oh and Dallis is suddenly a dragon knight for some reason and has really strong AOE lighting to stun the hell out of you if you can't deal with her immediately. This led to my deathfog cheese to start the fight which killed Lucian and the two minion and magisters leaving me with only Dallis, Braccus, and a gheist to deal with in phase 2 aside from the kraken which dies alongside Braccus taking any summons with it. I was pretty darn thorough in my playthrough so there is no reason why I should have had to so heavily cheese the fight just to make it manageable.
Mechanics:
Armor: There's enough discussions on this so I won't go into detail here. Armor seems a mixed bag. I like it because it nullifies the overabundance of hard CC from DOS 1, but at the same time it plays with party comps in a negative way as in some fights various party members may find themselves entirely useless (in my case Fane occassionally found himself as wasted damage because we busted down physical armor and he still had to carve through the magic armor. This meant he couldn't apply even minor status effects to help the fighters out. The reverse was true if enemies ever teleported themselves to places melee fighters couldn't reach.
Attacks of Opportunity: They were deadly as hell in DOS 1 but here almost feel gratuitous. They are still highly dangerous but enemies take them carelessly opening them up for more powerful attacks when the player turns roll around. A fighter in the middle of the pack will try and reposition only to eat 3-5 attacks of opportunity to do so sometimes dying outright or most times taking sever damage. Shouldn't said enemy just buckle down and throw out attacks.
Taunt: Make this pierce armor or else its useless. Seriously by the time you've taken down the armor to open them up to status effects you will have far better options to CC them than taunt. Taunt doesn't make them focus the taunter half the time anyway so it barely functions when it does land on top of it already entering fights way to late to be a viable choice amidst other more potent hard CCs.
Source Vampirism: For a divine power you had to learn enemies seem to wield it pretty darn easily. Until you find fountains source points are precious and enemies leeching half of it during a fight makes that really annoying. In all honesty this skill should only be available to really powerful beings. It felt far too common among enemies (I know purging wands and all that but still).
Source Points: In all honesty until I found a source fountain I was always to hesitant to drop source skills (which are really fun to use) because I was never sure it would have the impact I wanted. An enemy's armor might be just a bit too high and its damage thus feel wasted when other options are more immediately viable. Its like having a power weapon in a shooter; you horde it and horde it waiting for the opportune moment and by the time that moment comes you no longer have it because the level changed or the enemies vamped away all your source, or at least the amount needed to drop the skill you wanted. Being able to freely utilize all my biggest baddest skills in the end felt better than having to wonder what the best time to use it was and then never actually using it for 80% of the game.
Tanks: Great in theory and my Ifan was one hell of a tank when the enemies decided he was worth attacking. Even though Ifan was always in front the enemies would rather eat the attacks of opportunity and then get wasted the next turn to gib Fane then ever engage the tank. While its cool that the AI prioritizes squishier targets it is also annoying when they always do it without fail.
Undead: So I can walk through town casually and nobody bats an eye but as soon as combat starts I guess everyone knows Fane is a skeleton and defaults to blasting him with healing magic. I'm sorry but it makes his heal from poison next to useless when no enemy ever throws poison at him because they all somehow know he is a skeleton beneath all that armor. I could understand them falling back to healing after seeing poison healing the target but immediately dropping regen or healing ritual on Fane as an opener just doesn't make sense unless he is parading around with his boney skull on full display.
Thats all for now, I look forward to the discussion.
