My opinion:
At the moment the game is very unbalanced and a lot of things will be changed before release.
Why?
"Cheesing" is ok if the game is designed around it. A good example is Age of Decadence. In AoD combat is so difficult, that your only chance to win is to use absolutely every possibility the game gives you in order to have a chance. Focus on one type of weapon and combat style, poison your weapon, aim your attacks according to the enemies armor and stats, use nets and grenades to CC them, positioning and so on. You must use all of this and more, just pressing attack will be your death. Bad players (like me) have no chance in combat (I finished the game as pacifist). Good players will find this game difficult and it feels rewarding if you win any battle. Very good players can "cheese" so well that even this game is easy for them and this is the kind of cheesing that may feel very rewarding (sorry, I have never experianced that).
All of this is true for a game that is designed to have very difficult combat from the start. This is also very limiting because you have only a very limited selection of useful chars. You can be a blocker (strengh based weapon+shield, heavy armor, lots of points in weapon and block skill) or a dodger ( dex based weapon + dodge skill). All combat chars should have crafting and alchemy to create powerful poisoned weapons. If you leave this cookie cutter build, your life will get extremely harder.
now to D:OS2:
Larian games are designed in a way that you can play the game with whatever char you want. A rogue with fire spells, a mage who knows some basics in all schools of magic or a fighter who is married only to his 2hsword. You can do all of this and more and it will work. Some chars are better than others, but you do not need an optimized char to finish the game. The games are not designed around maximum combat difficulty like AoD, but around exploration, story and humor.
At the moment, some combos are completely overpowered (elf+ranger+sneak+sniper+guerilla+rage+adrenaline and maybe dual wield dagger+backstab+guerilla+elf+rage+sneak, and don´t forget leadership and encourage).
You do not need those chars to finish the game but doing so makes the game extremely easy.
Remember that at the moment we have only easy and normal mode, harder difficulties will come. I think at normal mode you should be able to create whatever char you want and finish the game without the need to use extreme cheese.
I also think the devs should disable some ways to use extreme cheese (not sure how) and they should reduce the power of some abilities so that the game is a bit more balanced.
Since there will be changes to the stat system, lots of balancing has to be done anyway.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist
World leading expert of artificial stupidity.
Because there are too many people who work on artificial intelligence already
