I am playing Lhose, and have the other 3 in my party. All have made it to L4 and I think that we've done everything before going into Fort Joy.
1. When leveling up, it would be nice to back points out. As it stands, you are stuck if you make a mistake.
2. It's pretty complex figuring out how to build your characters. Having someone with Pet Pal is important if you are into the story aspect.
3. It would be nice to be able to stop the other characters in your party when you want the sneakiest PC to scout or steal. Also would be helpful when traversing through the fire slug maze of fire. My main PC walks along the fire lines, but my companions walk through the flames and get burned.
Story related things didn't give enough opportunities to avoid a fight. Examples:
4. Griff encounter: Quest for stolen oranges + D. First off, would've been nice to smell the oranges before talking to stinger. First time I encountered him I left him alone cause he was sleeping. Anyway, got the oranges and went to complete Griff's quest and was only given 2 choices. Give up stingray as the thief, or fight griff and his thugs. I didn't think my group could take the thugs, and didn't want to turn stingray in, why couldn't we lie and say we killed the thief or that he was dead when found. Plenty of cases like that. Anyway I won the fight, but it was tough because we didn't have good armor or weapons. This is a case where positioning my companions and doing a "stay" would be useful. I could've had some of my guys on high ground checking the thugs. Didn't need everyone to talk to Griff. Also, was suprized that Ibn didn't bother me about giving him the drudane.
5. Positioning my party prior to fighting crocs and turtles would've make sense as well.
6. I haven't used pick pocket or thieving, not my play style, but I use Ibn for unlocking chests, and would use him if I really needed to pick pocket a guards keys or something.
7. I liked the Elven encampment, but didn't happen upon it until later. Although I save Ehloise from the thugs, she said follow her to safety, I wasn't quick enough and I lost her. It turned out fine since I found them later. I was confused that Lhose passed all skill checks to Supress her inner demons from killing the blind elf mystic, but I still only came to a final option to kill her. At the least, my other 3 companions could've stopped me. I liked the stuff we found and how the Prince was able to dig things cause he was a lizard, but he couldn't dig the opening to Mobe's secret cavern? Got a shovel after the Griff fight and came in to meet the guardian guy, the spear was awesome and later with my Prince at level 3 he could one shot minor opponents, and I think he killed the ancient turtle with two shots. I'm playing on explorer mode, glad for the easier mode. My feeling is, the point of the game it to get through the story, some fun combat challenges, but I don't want to have to tweak my party, skills, equipment etc just to get through some tough encounters like I had to for the Original Dragon Age (killing Morgana's mom in dragon form, or one of the Revenant battles. Had to search spoiler walkthroughs to win those battles).
8. In the fire slugs area, again glad for the pet pal skill for the dialog to avoid fighting them, found the tunnel into the prison. Was thinking about teleporting into the adjacent cell to get access to the fort. Also I didn't see anything past the fires slugs so didn't venture too far into their area (mostly because my party kept walking in the fire).
I think that I've explored all of the fort joy beach and areas in the ghetto, still need to retry the battle arena, wasn't strong enough the first time. Armor and weapons much better now. Haven't used the water barrels to put out fires on my PCs yet. Usually just want to spend the action to kill off bad guys first.
Also, haven't had any companions initiate dialog with me regarding their plot stories, maybe I'm just not far enough. But I would've thought Selene and the Prince would be contentious.
Overall very enjoyable!
