talking about progression, he feels that you are not really free of doing what you want, when you can finally leave cyseal, the level of the monsters is kinna hard so he had to go back in town to do few quest to lvl up (euh personnally, my friend and I did a lot of optionnal quest and the main quest until we found out who was the murderer before leaving cyseal, and still the fights were not so easy...)
With or without henchmen? Makes a pretty big difference in the current build.
