So after tons of retrying and reloading, we managed to get through two more fights. In one a nicely placed barrel blew up all the enemies at once.
The other fight we took advantage of the multiplayer game behaviour, i don't think it was supposed to work that way, we still almost died (from that one single guy that was left over.... ridiculous), but made it.
After that, all the other fights were manageable. Maybe cause of the new stuff and level we gained through those two fights. All of a sudden, the game and fights were super fun again, and reminded me more at our first go at divinity.
Our casters felt somewhat useless though, as it appears that things are so much longer on cooldown now. You have rounds where you can only shoot your staff once, and then not do anything else, as everything is on cooldown. Maybe that gets better with higher levels and more different spells.
I think that having the right gear is so much more important now. Finding it in the beginning time can be quite hard. We went back and forth several times to sell everything we had, to get a few more new items from merchants, that then made the difference. But it is not a good game flow if you are traveling back and forth all the time, but it is what helped us finally. We were unable to progress by just going forward through the game levels. This is what got us into the unbeatable situation.. with the money and gear we had, we could not go on. You would get the money in the next area, but then you need to go back to invest it first, before tackling the fights in the area you just got the money from.
Maybe make some starter gear or more money items available earlier, so that you can get decked out before moving into the new area. It for sure sucks to first collect everything you can in a new area, avoiding fights, heading back to the camp and vendor to buy stuff, to then go do the fights you tried avoiding.
This is what worked for us after a lot of trying and dying. We progressed and things go nicely now, but it was tremedously frustrating at first, as we had the impression "this is the next fight, we just moved up to it, it is supposed to be beatable with what we have now, as this is the progress we just made".
I also miss the ability from the first divinity: original sin, to just travel to any waypoint from whereever you are.. this made some needed shopping trips also way easier, than having to travel and walk back and forth so much.
