So my friend and i have played through act 1 right after the first release, and we gave it another go after the bigger patches inbetween, to see how it changed, so some thoughts on that:
The beginner ice shard spell:
It may have been very strong in our first playthrough, so i can understand the nerf... but i think this nerf bat was swung way too hard. It needs more action points to cast, has a longer cooldown, has only 3 projectiles, has a way larger area those projectiles hit.. and the slipping on ice is way more rare than it used to be.
So this spell was affected by 5 different changes/nerfs.. and now feels totally useless.
I agree it was too strong at first... but now it is way too weak!
We really like how the main attributes work now, also that you get a memory slot every 2 levels. Thats way better than this old system, where you barely had any points to spare, as all was needed just to stay "up par" with the enemies.
It feels like the game got a lot harder. In our first playthrough, we have been quite challeneged, and had to do quite a few of the fights several times till it worked out.
Now we seem to get slaughtered without even a glimpse of being able to win in more fights than we would want to admit.
It does feel like the enemies got a lot more armor/magic armor now, and it is harder to get through it, to do any sort of damage. While the enemies often just 1 or 2 hit our characters.
For example those fire slugs, in our first game, we killed them... in this second game.. we sneaked past, as basically as single one of them can erradicate your party, as their fire attack 1 or 2 hits your guys.
The general feeling i have out of it is, that those guys hit as if they were higher levels.. like we are 3.. and they feel like level 10. We barely scratch their defenses, and they obliterate us with 1-3 hits.
We may not be the most advanced super perfect strategists and players, but we got along before. Now it feels like this game was made for super pros, and us casuals got left behind. It is hard to describe, but after restarting a fight countless times, with different ideas, tactics, and not even seeing a hint of being able to succeed, this has moved up to a point were i would say "unplayable once you enter the actual prison, unless you are a stretegic genius".
It feels like they are totally overgeared, or we are absolutely undergeared. Yet we did everything we could, scrounched up the money and gear we could.. i don't think we could have prepared any better. I am not sure how to fully put this into words or describe that, especially as it was not only one fight, but from this point most fights we got into. From our first play through i do remember some fights that we had to redo, try a different strategy, but then won..
So while we finished our first play through, we are more or less stuck on our second, and that quite early on top of it. We will for sure keep trying and experimenting more, but while i really really liked our first go at it, i am somewhat frustrated about the second go so far. What is even more frustrating is, that i cannot really put in words what i feel is wrong, so it may help with the balancing. I just see that we cannot even get through the armor of the enemies, while a single guy of them, kills one guy of us in just 1 single round.. many fights end after just 2-3 rounds with us being totally obliterated, with them barely having a scratch. As mentioned, it does feel like you step as a level 1 into the hands of a level 10. So either they have way too much armor/hitpoints... they do way too much damage.... or we have way too less armor, and way too less damage.
For example the fight with the guy who has those 3 flesh golems... on our first playthrough, those golems needed 2-3 rounds to even get out of their cage. This playthrough, they got out of the cage in the first round, and in some cases even attacked one of our guys, and right away killed them with a single strike. So those guys seem to do waaaaaaay more damage than they did in our first go.
